I mean, her LICKER. She is getting worse as she gets older. Whenever she gets to meet a person other than me, she won't stop licking - she'll do drive by licks or settle in for whatever body part she can reach, just a steady lick lick lick. It drives me crazy, as well as most other people. People can't pet her w/o her licking them (and jumping, but that's a whole 'nother issue). I want to nip this in the bud but I don't want her to associate being around people as a bad thing. I know the licking is due to her anxiety so I want to stay away from negative things.
One of her favorite people came to my house today and every time Inara licked her more than once she got sent to her kennel. I didn't close her in, I just pointed at the kennel and said "kennel" in a completely neutral tone. I calmly told her good girl when she went in and waited until she relaxed before releasing her (again, calmly). When I released her, she'd come over to me, lick my hand once (almost seemed apologetic - head down, gently wagging tail, etc) and then she'd promptly go back to my friend and start licking again. Couldn't tell you how many times we repeated this. My friend actually couldn't pet her at all because Inara wouldn't stop licking long enough to stay out of her crate for more than a minute.
Is this effective or would this be considered using the crate as punishment (which I don't want)? Would it be better for me to put her in a down for a couple minutes instead of the crate? Or am I totally approaching this the wrong way?
And just for the sake of body language, when Inara greets people, even people who have been gone for literally 5 minutes, she launches at them, butt wagging wildly, just beside herself with excitement. Once the launching is over she settles into the frantic licking - still with the crazy wagging butt, tail neither up nor down, just neutral (but smacking her sides as she wags).
So yeah, ideas?