Why your dog gets in your face
Each of the different reasons that your dog gets in your face will likely come with a number of clues in the way that it does it.
The reason that it gets up in your face could be that it is trying to get attention from you. This would be more likely if it does it when you have not been giving it much attention and if you tend to give it more attention when it does it.
Instead of giving it attention, when it does it, you could try to ignore it by leaving the room temporarily and to reward it when it is being well behaved.
The reason that it does it could be that it is trying to show that it is glad to see you. This would be more likely if it only seems to do it when you come home. In this case, it would help to train it not to jump up as discussed in this post.
Another common reason that dogs will get in your face is that they are being affectionate. When it’s getting up in your face it’s letting you know that it trusts you and that you are a part of its tribe. This type of behavior is normal and will often happen when you try to pet it.
However, it would help to get it to stop by following the tips mentioned below.
Another common reason that dogs do it is that they are excited. When dogs get excited it’s common for them to express their excitement by jumping up and getting in peoples faces. They do it because they want to greet you at the face and because their mother would feed them from the face as puppies and they would jump up.
This type of behavior can be stopped with training using the methods in the section below.
The reason that it does it could be that it is bored. This would be more likely to be the reason if it does it more when it has not gotten much exercise. If your dog is not currently getting the right amount of exercise for its breed then it would help to make sure that it does.
If you have not spent much time training your dog to behave the way that you want it to then it will not know how it is meant to behave and it will behave the way that it wants to. The way that it wants to behave is unlikely to be the way that you would like.
If you have not given it much training then it would help to do so by starting out with the basics and building up from there.
The reason that it does it might be that it is its way of getting you to do something for it. It could be that it does it because it wants you to feed it, walk it or give it attention. This would be more likely if it does it at the same time that you would normally give it those things.
It could be the case that you have inadvertently trained it to get up in your face. This would be more likely if you tend to give it things that it wants, when it does it, such as attention, toys or treats.
Instead of giving it things that it wants, when it does it, try avoiding rewarding it, training it not to using the tips below and rewarding it when it is being well behaved.
Below, I will mention some particularly helpful things to consider when trying to figure out why your dog gets in your face. Once you have a better idea of the cause it will be easier to take the appropriate action.
It would help to consider what happened when it first started getting in your face. If it did not always get in your face then it could be the case that there was a trigger that caused it to start doing it.
Things that could have happened could include:
If it has always done it then it would be more likely to be due to things such as being excited, trying to greet you or not having been trained not to do it.
The timing of when it tends to get in your face would also be something to consider.
If you notice that it always gets in your face when you come back from work then it would be more likely that it is showing its excitement. Whereas, if it tends to do it when you would normally feed it or give it exercise or attention then it would likely be trying to get you to give it those things.
Why does my dog get in my face?
Your dog gets in your face to groom you and greet you. They do these by licking your face, a behavior learned from their ancestors or from puppyhood. In dogs, licking is one way to establish ties. In some cases, dogs get in your face to get your undivided attention.
How do I stop my dog from pawing my face?
Keep your dog’s nails trimmed short. If your dog is pawing at your face, he could accidentally scratch your face or eye with a sharp claw. Take him for some extra walks to tire him out and give him some extra attention to see if that helps. Keep your face away from his “paw zone” if you can.
14 Signs Your Dog REALLY Loves You, Confirmed by Science
Ever since she arrived at my home at the age of 10 weeks, Clara has been a challenge.
One of her more problematic behaviors was her mugging of my face whenever it got within range. It happened all the time. How many times a day do you lean over your puppy, or lean over in her presence to pick up something off the floor? Most often something that she either dropped or shouldn’t have. Answer: a lot. Except not me, anymore, because she shaped me not to. If a strong, speedy puppy came barreling at your head every time you bent over, you might modify your behavior, too. So I do this embarrassing dance whenever I need to pick something up: distracting her, sneaking past, or trying to move REALLY FAST (which of course makes her all the more excited when she does catch me).
I took a stab at modifying her behavior early on, but I didn’t pick a viable method. What I did was treat it rather like a combination of a desensitization exercise and proofing a stay. I would put her in a sit stay and move over her very gradually, treating each movement. Slight lean, treat. Slight knee bend, treat. I did lots of sessions of this. Way too many for the good I got out of it. And while it may have helped somewhat with her being comfortable with those movements or the proximity of my face, it didn’t even begin to address the problem. I still had a small, then medium sized (then large, I admit it) puppy coming for me at the speed of light when I bent over. Because she wasn’t already in a stay to begin with. Duh.
Also sometime during her puppyhood I had another not so bright idea. I thought, Premack! Premack’s Principle states that more probable behaviors (bumping my face) can reinforce less probable behaviors (performing a sit stay when my face is close by). If she so strongly wants to lick and nuzzle and bump my face, wouldn’t that the ultimate reward for doing what I want first?
Does anyone see why this might not work, even if I could keep her from hurting me?
It was such a newbie error. I had never had a dog who got aroused this easily before. When your dog is excited, it is so easy to assume that she is happy. But the face licking is much more likely to be a stress and appeasement behavior. I checked with my teacher, who knows Clara well and observed her. She said Clara did not look comfortable to her when doing the face seeking stuff. And that fits with the Clara I know, when I just stop to consider. She has a huge palette of appeasement behaviors and drops into those patterns at the drop of a hat.
So my idea was like saying to someone, “OK I see you bite your nails when you are nervous. Your reward after filling out this difficult form correctly is the opportunity to bite your nails.” OK, it might be just the thing. But a stress behavior like that has specific triggers, and is not always rewarding if those triggers aren’t there. After the form filling is done, the person may have no desire at all to bite their nails. In that case the chance to perform that behavior would not be reinforcing.
And that’s the reaction I got when I tried it with Clara. I got a good stay out of her, then knelt down and invited her to come lick my face. And got a big, fat “Huh?”
So the Premack experiment was short-lived. I should mention also that inviting a dog to come mug your face is, in many situations, not a good idea. Lots of dogs are bothered by proximity of faces, and lots of bite incidents happen to people who thought their dog was fine with that kind of thing. And in any case, even if had worked it would have had the same problem as my desensitization approach. It didn’t address the problem directly because she was not already in a stay when my face approached.
So I quit and was basically living with it while I worked on things for which I got a better return on my time. One day I mentioned it to my teacher again while she was here at the house to work with Clara. I mentioned my gradual “stay” approach. She said she wouldn’t do it like that, instead, why not make bending over a cue to go to her crate? And in four repetitions of “new cue/old cue” little Clara was running to her crate when Lisa bent over.
In behavior analysis, this is called “Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible Behavior,” or DRI. It’s a widely used technique to get an animal (including a person) to stop doing something by making an incompatible behavior pay off really, really well. Clara cannot go straight to her crate and stay there and simultaneously leap up and mug a face.
Yargh, why didn’t I think of that? I said some rude things out of frustration if I recall.
But even then it didn’t make it to the top of my priority list. I played with it a couple if times, considering making bending over be a cue for crate or go to mat, but never got off the ground.
But I train Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels and one day there it was. Level 2 Down, Step 5. Teaching default cues. Is there a situation in which you would always like the dog automatically to lie down? Sue describes teaching a default down and stay when putting food dishes down, when meeting children or old people, or even when talking on the telephone.
Where do you need Level 2 Down? And the answer was obvious. Every time I lean over. I won’t always have a crate for her to go into, or a mat for her to get on. But by golly she can virtually always lie down. This finally gave me the incentive to do something about the behavior. So I used the New Cue/Old Cue method, as Lisa had done with the crate, and had the basic behavior in four iterations. (I think it went so quickly because it is much faster for a dog to go from a verbal to a body cue than the other way around.) After that it was just reminding her and expanding it into more difficult situations.
There are a few real life ramifications of my body cue for Clara’s down, and for once I may have thought them through. Mostly that if leaning over is a cue for down, I need to keep that in mind when practicing other behaviors, especially duration behaviors. If I have put her in a sit/stay and then lean over her, I have given her two conflicting cues. I can train her which one takes priority, but for now I’ll probably avoid that situation, while I’m strengthening the default down. If I were planning competition obedience with her or some other precise work where the difference between the two behaviors was crucial, I would need to choose another solution or else pay some keen attention to the discrimination/priority of the cues. But basically right now it is a very high priority to get her out of my face.