All lot of people seem to think they need to address these bad behaviors – the dog is jumping, the dog is barking and they think they need to tell the dog ‘no’. What I like to do is give the dog something more productive to do. Often what I’ll do is teach the to ‘lay down’ and ’stay’ and then once the dog understands that then we will start to go towards that then we will start to have someone ring the doorbell. At that point, the dog is much more excited then normal when they hear the doorbell so often what I will do is keep the dog on a leash and a collar when we are practicing. When approaching the door, have the dog do their ‘lay down’ and if they are too excited, give them a little tug as a little bit of motivation to ‘lie down’ and ‘stay’  then I open the door. It’s often too much to ask to expect the dog to know what to do so you have to guide the dog and show the dog what is more appropriate then just barking.

As for when to take the leash off, I normally do is do it in stages. The first number of times we go through this the dog is on leash. Once the dog gets used to the idea that this is what we do instead of jumping on the guests we drop the leash but he is still wearing it, just dragging it to give him his freedom. If the dog decides not to do what is asked of him, I can still give him a little tug on the leash. Once the dog is doing that well, then what I will do is actually to what I call a ‘tab leash’ which is just a clip with maybe 18″ of light cotton rope attached to it and we will do it a number of times with that. Once the dog is doing perfect there, we will do it with no leash.

What most people do is put themselves in a situation where they cannot communicate with the dog besides shouting at it ‘no, no, no don’t do that!’. That never works but attaching something physical to the dog and giving a little tug now and then. This way you are attaching something physical to the words you’re using and puts you in a position where you don’t have to yell, you don’t have to scream, you can simply get the dog to lay down. Easier said then done, it does take repetition and does take a lot of work but doing it in those stages you can wean the dog off the use of the leash. Its sort of a Pavlovian response – the doorbell rings, the dog goes crazy, the doorbell rings, the dog goes crazy. Now what we are doing is reversing that response – the doorbell rings, the dog lays down. That becomes the natural behavior instead of the going crazy, jumping and barking.

Ty Brown is an expert dog trainer, author, and speaker who specializes in obedience training, behavior modification, protection dog training, and narcotics dogs.  To learn more about Ty and the dog training services he offers, visit www.dogbehavioronline.com