Does your dog greet you politely when you return home? Watch the video to see if Blitzen greets me politely. . .

We love how excited our dogs are when we return home. Who else in our lives is THAT excited for us to return home?

Greetings can be problematic though, if the greeting is out-of-control. Jumping, barking, nipping, and other perfectly natural dog behaviors can become a huge problem if you are getting scratched up or even knocked over when you come in the door.

I want my dogs to be excited and happy to see me without being over-the-top out-of-control.

Blitzen does a nice job of that now. He's two years old in this video. He is not nearly as polite if we allow him to greet with Zooka at the same time!

The video actually starts before I get to the door. Blitzen runs over to the window when he realizes that I am home. You see his tail wag, but he's still pretty calm.

Then he sees me approaching and starts to bark a bit. This is still pretty calm for him.

Then he waits patiently for me to open the door.

You will also notice that we have an ex-pen set up around our front door. This is a safety measure for our boarding dogs so that no one can easily slip out the door unexpectedly. Our dogs do not rush out the door, but we always keep it in place to make sure we keep up good habits when boarding dogs are with us.

The ex-pen also allows me to get in the door without being bombarded if I do have dogs who do NOT greet politely. Or if there are multiple dogs greeting me at the door. This gives all the dogs a chance to see me but calm down just a bit before they can actually make physical contact with me.

When I enter, he is bouncy but can't get to me. He's just bouncing up and down. Perfectly acceptable behavior. He's excited but not out of control.

Once I move the ex-pen, he greets nicely. All wiggles but all four feet on the floor.

Then he just can't help himself and does jump up. I remove attention and move on. He quickly gets all four paws back on the floor.

When he gets excited again, I direct him to go grab a toy. He often has already grabbed a toy by the time I come in.

We still have a little work to do to entirely eliminate the jumping, but it's not bad. He's more up and down, rather than all over me.

Overall, a much calmer greeting than we had last year.

How do your dogs greet when you come home?