we have a lovely rescue dog, dempsey, who we've had for 5 months. he's just turned a year old, is a kelpie x rotti x unknown. he's a lovely dog, VERY energetic and takes well to training but we can't seem to stop him jumping on strangers. he doesn't jump on us (or rarely) as we always turn our back and ignore him, although he still manages a lick on the mouth when we bend down.
when we take him to the park/dog beach however, he plods along with me ok off lead til he sees someone in the distance then he's off and running to play with their dogs (very hyper) and jumps up to lick folk in the face. he has split two lips this way, purely with the force of his powerful hind legs. we keep him on the lead when we can, and walk him when there is no-one around when possible, however it needs to be fixed as we want him to be able to run off some of that energy rather than just walk placidly on the lead, and frolick with dogs without the risk of huring someone, especially kids. i feel awful leaving him on a lead when he has so much energy to burn, and we can only fit in 2 walks a day. i recently had a nasty girl on the beach scream in my face for 5 minutes as he managed to lick her forehead, not a worry if you like dogs but no fun if you're scared of them, even if you ARE on a dog beach.
something we have been trying, with SOME success, is training him to HALT when he approaches a person; halt basically means he gets loads of praise and treats if he either stops, changes direction or just doesn't jump. the only reason this has kind of worked is that another dog owner has been jumped on a lot and has very patiently assisted in teaching him HALT (thanks Nell and Issy). i can detail the training of this halt if anyone wants it.
does anyone else have any ideas? we don't do the 'knee to the chest' as we don't want to hurt his still-forming chest structures, and given he gets out of reach we often can't grab him mid-jump and give him the big NO. people keep suggesting we give him a smack but we don't agree with using violence or pain, and he has had 2 other owners so it's a risk given we don't know his past.
help please?