Biting and fussing over peoples feet

[Thornrose]

My friend has a lovely little dog, around 18 months old. He is a bit anxious and reactive but very sociable with humans.

When people visit her house he's so happy, until they leave, then he gets almost hysterical. Fussing around their feet, untying shoelaces and unfortunately on 2 occasions now has nipped and once bitten through a shoe.

I think she should just put him in the garden before people leave as clearly he finds it very stressful. She insists she can train him out of it, with limited success so far.

Any ideas from experienced dog owners.

Can she get him to sit? It's an alternative behaviour and he can't bite feet while he's doing it. He can be rewarded for sitting still, so he can learn to associate people leaving with good things.

I've used it as a way of calming my dogs down before a walk, when they get over-excited and bark and jump around.

Is it a herding breed?

Remove dogs before people leave. It is a behaviour that tends to spread if not worked on eg when people just get up to walk around the room.

So teaching a settle on a mat and a good wait also helps

Our rescue had started to do this, in particular with my 17 year old sons feet.
This weekend, we had a behavioural expert in for various other reasons. She suggested distraction techniques, such as waving his favourite toy the other direction, then when he moves the other way to give a small training treat. Eventually he will learn that good things come from avoiding the biting.
She also advised us not to run away from our dog (which my son does) and to stand still so he knows my sons feet are not a threat (obviously this is easier said than done so that’s a work in progress for us atm).
As our dog is 2 so older she has suggested we try muzzle training if the former doesn’t work.
The other advice for us and future visitors is to have a stair gate between two rooms and place our dog in the other room so he can still see the visitors but can’t get to them.

An acquaintance had a dog like this, a farm-bred collie. I ended up being bitten on my back as I tried to leave. It happened to others and in the end he was PTS. Your friend needs to get a grip.