Day Three -- At the Door

Part of what we do when we want to stop an unwanted behavior is to first teach the dog what behavior we want. And then, in the case of someone coming to the door, we need to change their response to a stimulus. When someone comes to the door it's very exciting and can also be a little anxiety ridden. Scout and Jessie have learned that when the doorbell rings or someone knocks on the door, someone new has arrived. So the knock or the ring is the stimulus and we want to teach a different response to both those actions.

When we have been working on this, neither Scout nor Jessie have responded by barking when I knock or ring. This is fine because we want to to work with the dogs when they are not over threshold (so worked up that they can't respond to anything). This allows us the opportunity to teach them when they are in a state where they are able to learn. It could also be that the sounds I have sound different than the ones they have at home (which I suspect is the case because Scout barked twice at a knock and a ring on TV). But that's ok. We'll lay the groundwork and then do a quick catch up with the sounds from home.

Once I've taught Scout (who I suspect is the instigator) when the doorbell rings, look to me for a reward, then I can give the cue to go to her bed. Note too, that I am working with them separately for these exercises. We wouldn't get anywhere if one was setting the other off.

Scout is good at going to her bed .

Jessie is a little slower to get there and needs more physical cues.

But Scout is still working on the stay portion. We separate out stay into three components; duration, distance and distraction. We don't start to combine them until they are doing pretty well with all of the components individually. Scout is doing pretty well with duration and distance but struggles some with distraction. This will be a very important component to work on when it comes to distractions at the door.

In general, Jessie is a little slower at everything. Her come is slow but she always comes with a cute little tail wag.

Scout comes more quickly but she is less consistent in her follow through. But she's getting better...