All the things I wish I knew before I got my first ever puppy!
The dreaded doorbell. I genuinely have never seen an animal go as crazy as Cooper does when the doorbell goes. Even if he’s down the far end of the garden or in the deepest sleep, if the doorbell goes, he’s there in seconds, barking away ready to pounce on whatever un-expecting delivery driver is on the other side!
Thankfully he only wants to lick visitors to death instead of anything more sinister, but it quickly became a nightmare trying to control him when my takeaway was been delivered!
When the trainer did his first home visit, Cooper, right on form, bolted to the door, barking away. At least we knew the trainer would be okay with dogs! He said it was a common problem, and one quite easily solved. Like all training it can also be developed further, i.e. having your dog stand next to you when you open the door (but not lunge for you visitor obviously!) This was quite an appealing prospect and something that I’m currently working towards. There have been a lot of break in’s in our area and also a lot of cases of people posing as delivery drivers to get in your house. At 5’2, I don’t think I’d be much cop at stopping someone, but they may think twice if they see the dog- even if he is the soppiest dog on the planet!
If your dog is the same and you want to calm them down for the doorbell, there’s 2 options he talked about, but both with a similar end goal- taking the fun out of the doorbell.
1. DON'T LET THEM NEAR THE DOOR
Simple. The logic being that if they can’t get near the door, eventually the fun and excitement of the doorbell will wear off and they’ll stop reacting to it. For us however this was easier said than done, especially if he was asleep in the hallway, there was no way of us stopping him from getting to the door. That leads to option 2.
2. PUT THEM ON THEIR LEAD AND WALK THEM TO THEIR ROOM/CRATE.
It may take slightly longer to open the door, but I’ve been doing this for the past week and there has been a crazy amount of progress when the doorbell goes. You just need to follow the steps to a tee. When the doorbell goes, *cue crazy dog*, get their lead and clip it on them, then walk them (or probably pull them in the first few instances) into a room or to their crate, take the lead off of them and shut the door behind you (this is an instance when baby gates are useful!). The key thing being that you do NOT speak to them the entire time, it is all done in silence. Then once either your guests are in and settled, or the delivery etc has finished, you can let them out.
It took us about 2-3 days of doing it with plenty of doorbell practice runs, but now we either have 2 reactions… If he’s asleep in the kitchen he looks up for the doorbell, but if he sees you get his lead he stays put, or if he does run to the door, if you clip his lead on him he voluntarily walks to his bedroom and allows me to shut the baby gate and door without any fuss- he’s learned that the quicker he goes in, the quicker he gets out.
