Managing A Shy and Fearful Dog at Your Exterior Doors – Part 2

If you had asked me before we got Rosie, I would have told you that I felt pretty confident about teaching our dogs to wait at the door. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even have said that we “taught” them; the exiting procedure evolved organically, and each newcomer caught on pretty quickly from the resident dog.

Rosie would need a separate blog post just to enumerate her truly exceptional qualities, but for illustrative purposes, I will focus on her most annoying, dangerous and terrifying behavior: bolting through an open door. We knew Rosie was special from the moment we met her. She adored the kids, played well with Katie, our shy dog, and had a terrifically friendly temperament.

Then we adopted her.

Impulse control…none. Manners…none. Cat friendly…no. Distractibility…off the charts. We doubt she ever lived in a home environment before, and she obviously didn’t read the rule book on how to harmoniously coexist in our family.  But despite the culture shock, (and the bolting and the chasing of the cats and the house training) we never lost sight of the fact that Rosie was the most loving, affectionate dog we had yet adopted.

Are We Smarter Than our Newly Adopted Dog?

The first thing we needed was a management plan to make sure that Rosie never had the chance to taste the freedom of being off leash and unsupervised in our neighborhood.

1. Baby gates were used to block access to the back door (our primary entrance and exit with the dogs).
2. The back door needed to be double checked EVERY TIME someone exited and entered.
3. She (and any dog, to some degree) HAD to be exercised every day, or we could almost guarantee that she would bolt out an unattended door to release her pent up energy on her own terms.
4. Anyone entering and exiting needed to be cautious and open the door only wide enough so they could walk in, and close it immediately behind them.
5. If the door was being frequently used (i.e. the children were playing outside or groceries were being carried in) then Rosie would be crated, or the door to the kitchen would be closed so people could come and go freely.

The problem with management is that it always fails, as it did spectacularly in our case, multiple times. We needed to get serious and teach Rosie some impulse control so she wouldn’t knock someone over trying to squeeze out the door as it opened.

The Magic Door

1. In order for the door to swing wide to the great outdoors, Rosie had to exhibit some self control.
2. To set her up for success, we made sure before every training session that chipmunks, squirrels, cats and neighbor dogs were all far away from the back yard.
3. We started by asking Rosie to sit while we clipped her leash to her collar. If she could maintain the sit for the leash, we opened the door and released her (always holding onto her 6 foot leash)
4. Then we asked for a sit, leashed her and put our hand on the door handle. If Rosie broke her sit, we took our hand off the door knob and waited until she sat once again.
5. If she could sit with our hand on the handle, we opened the door immediately and released her.
6. Then we raised the criteria. We asked for the sit, put our hand on the door handle and asked for eye contact before opening the door and releasing her.

Eye contact can be hard for some fearful dogs, so if you are training your fearful dog to wait at the door, you may find that a solid sit is enough, before opening the door.

We Weren’t Satisfied with a Nice Sit and Some Eye Contact Though

The most critical piece of the whole chain of behaviors was training Rosie to “wait” while sitting and offering eye contact at a fully open door.

1. We asked for the sit, then slowly opened the door an inch. If she moved forwards the door, it would close. If she sat, the door would open, and as long as she remained sitting, the door would continue to open.
2. When Rosie could reliably sit with the door open wide, we asked for eye contact in order to release her. Rosie would at first just glance at us, but that was ok; it was the start of being able to look at us for confirmation that she was finally, at long last free to step into our great suburban wilderness.
3. Once she could preform the whole chain of events successfully 8 out of 10 times, we named the behavior “wait”.
4. We never, ever deviate from this door ritual. We don’t want to send a mixed message that occasionally, even if she doesn’t offer the full chain of behaviors, she gets rewarded anyway.

As a side note, the reinforcement of going outside was a strong enough reward that no food or additional rewards were used. This concept of asking someone to do something they’re not too keen on to get to do something that’s really, really, important to them (i.e. wait at the door in order go outside) is known as Premack’s Principle. If you would like to read more about it, check out this link.

Wait… Exactly How Long Does This Take?

Some dogs can catch on to the game pretty quickly. Katie, our shy girl, figured it out almost immediately. Rosie, though, took a long time, because on a scale of 1 to 10, her impulse control started out at -476. What we did notice is that her ability to wait (for food, at the garden gate, etc.) actually increased very rapidly at the same time she was gaining self control at the back door.

1. The key component is to practice every single time you take your dog out of the house.
2. Budget a lot of extra time when you’re first starting out, and try your best to remain calm and neutral.

Teaching good manners at an open door is well worth the “wait”. (Get it?… Wait at the door!)

Question: Have you trained your dog to have good manners at your exterior doors?