We’re still on the subject of boundaries, and doorways are a perfect one to practice this. Not only is it really straightforward to do, but it has a whole load of benefits built in.
Primarily, it’s a safety exercise. We don’t want our dogs charging out of the door of the house, the car or, when we’re out on adventures, the tent or into a new field.
Teaching control around these thresholds really is essential for keeping our dogs safe.
Secondly, it’s an excellent impulse control exercise. Dogs come out of the factory wired to just respond to their surroundings and impulsively follow the shortest route towards the next opportunity. Learning that seeing a thing doesn’t always mean you get the thing is one of the life skills for dogs that translates across a whole load of behaviours, from recall to reactivity to settling in a coffee shop.
It’s also another perfect opportunity to kindly teach your dog what ‘no’ means.
So this is how we’ll teach it…
Goal: Dog sits and waits to be released before exiting a door
Set up:
- We’re going to need a dog and a door or gate that closes
- We’re going to start with interior doors, before moving on to doors that exit to the outside world
Exercise
- We’re going to do this every time we go through a door that was previously closed
- Have the dog sit
- Start to open the door slowly
- If the dog gets up, we say ‘no – sit’ and close the door (carefully – we’re not trying to slam it in their face!)
- We ask the dog to sit again and repeat
- When the dog stays sat long enough that we can open the door without them getting up to follow through, we can then walk through the door and tell them ‘ok’