GUESTS RINGING THE DOORBELL?! I'M FREAKING OUT!
Polite doorbell etiquette is so important!! I always like to go over the doorbell protocol to help owners stay in control of their dog’s behaviour during these sometimes unexpected moments. When the door bell rings unexpectedly, it’s often startling and most dogs react by barking and rushing the door. Should this happen, what we want to do is first correct that mentally aroused/adrenalized response and then send the dog to hold their place command while we answer the door.
Door reactivity is a very common issue for dogs and it usually takes the the form of barking, growling, charging the door, jumping on people, mouthing, biting, or grabbing clothing. Dogs can be crazy over excited or dangerously uncomfortable about guests arriving but either way, the root problem is the same... mental arousal. So we must correct this mental arousal every time and teach the dog that reactive choices whether over excited or nasty are inappropriate and that the right choice is to stay calm, stay away from the door/entryway and follow commands.
Don’t try to open the door with a barking, reactive or over excited dog at your side! Correct that unwanted mindset first, then secure the dog in command (or in her crate) BEFORE opening the door and welcoming guests. While guests are visiting, the dog’s job is to continue holding command politely with no staring, stalking, loading, or mental arousal at the guests. Since our pups are working super hard by holding command and being on their BEST calm and polite behaviour, we also want to help them to be successful by making sure they are off limits to everyone while on place and in command.
Doorbell exercises!
It takes a lot of daily work and patterning to maintain our dog’s polite behaviour and calm state of mind towards the doorbell and guests so I always recommend that my clients practice their doorbell exercises daily so that the dog is rock solid in their skill set BEFORE they get an actual knock/guest for real. Think of this like sports games, the players practice practice practice constantly before playing an actual game because you first need to develop and hone your skills before using them in the real game and in order to keep those skills sharp, you need to continue practicing them and using them or else you’ll lose them.
In this video, we have a segment from Luna’s session where we are doing some door exercises by ring the bell, knocking on things, opening and closing doors and correcting all forms of mental arousal and reactivity while also using the structure of our calm place command to give Luna a more constructive job to do other than reacting to the door 😉