hello, we have a wonderful staffy bitch, who is a year old the thing is she is very excited when people come to the house or when visting people, when we took her to the vets recently they couldnt even weigh her as she wouldnt calm down, the vet said she needs some training, but shes fine at home we us, can any 1 offer us any advice please. 

it sounds like new people/situations that are exciting her. I would try taking her everywhere with you and exposing her to loads of different people and situations, have you been to training classes? If you can get her to down and stay then when she does become overexcited put her in the down position and talk calmly to her till she settles. I know what you mean though - staffys just love people and getting excited is part of being a staff! :)

A lot of people have dogs at home who have little foilbles that they live with (I'm one of them ;))  It may not be formal training she needs so much as owners who tell her what they *do* want her to do when people call, and familiarisation with different environments, so they loose their novelty.  For instance, take her to the vets regularly, but ask people NOT to fuss her and get her excited, so she learns that the vets isn't an exciting place.......  I think most people would be glad to have your issues than a dog who fears the vet.

  A little obedience training can help, as you can then ask her to 'sit'.  But remember, we all have different thresholds of what sort of behaviour we're happy with, and it's YOUR dog and you have to live with it - but a responsive dog is a lot more fun to live with IMHO

I have a 10 year old staffy who is exactly the same.  He's never grown up.  The way we deal with this is when the Vet needs to do something with him that requires him to be less excitable I leave him there for an hour or so.  When I'm not there he is fine and the Vet can get on with his job.  Its not ideal, but better than having to sedate him.  Unfortunately we have never been able to get him to do exactly what we want when out of the house (everything is just too exciting), but we don't mind he wouldn't be Fagin if he wasn't constantly being naughty, its part of his character!

Julie (& Fagin).