Today I want to talk to you about a concept that I call “Training a Greeting Routine”, so that he stops barking at strangers who come into his territory… specifically people who come to the front door.

And I think it’s important before I show you one of the ways for how to make a dog stop barking at people who come to your home to understand a couple of principles.

First, I believe that in MOST, but not all cases, your dog is barking at people for instinctive reasons.  Reasons that are engrained in him from his genetics, passed down by his wolf ancestry.  It’s their instinct to protect their territory, and I think it’s helpful to realize that it’s an instince and not that your dog is mean, or annoying, or some other humanesque trait that we want to call him by.

It’s simply a natural behavior, that he’s following through on.

There’s a good book that I recommend you read on this topic that takes this concept of genetic pass down traits even further, called “The Other End Of The Leash”.  It’s one of those MUST reads if you want to better understand your dog.

And in the case of dogs barking at people coming into their territory, one of the reasons he may be doing this is because it’s normally the job of the leader of the dog pack to protect his territory.  So if your dog doesn’t think you’re fulfilling your guard dog duties your dog may try to fill the void naturally.

But that’s a deeper topic for another time.

The second principle I’d like you to understand is a pinciple that I call the “One Track Mind Theory”.

The one track mind theory states that an animal seems to have a hard time doing two things at the same time.  For example, dog’s don’t seem to be very good at barking at a stranger while performing a behavior like a down, shake, or go to your mat.

It’s doesn’t always hold true, but it does seem to work most of the time, especially if you ask the dog to do a specific behavior before he get’s too emotional.

Professional animal trainers would call this reinforcing an alternative behavior, and they’ve been using it to sucessfully mange animals in theme parks all over the world.

And in this post I want to give you a little better idea of how you can use this same concept to train your dog to perform a “Greeting Routine”, or an alternative behavior to barking, when he sees people coming up to your door.

The first step to training this behavior is to teach your dog the ‘down’ command.

I’m not going to go into how to do that in this post, but let’s just say that you want him to learn down, and learn how to stay in the down position until you release him.

But that’s just the beginning.

Even if your dog performs an excellent down/stay for you in your living room.  That doesn’t mean he’ll do it when he’s all amped up emotionally when that doorbell rings.

You have to build him up to that point.

You need to start inviting people over to your home to be in the room as you train your dog.  Slowly make your dog’s environment more and more distracting, until your dog will hold a down/stay even with a 6 year old’s birthday party going on and pizza being spilled on the floor.

Remember to set your dog up for success, and only add more distractions when you notice your dog being able to handle them.  And build them up to the point where no matter where you go, or who you’re around your dog will listen to you.

Then you’re ready to tackle the greeting routine.

This can be done several different ways, but one way is to train your dog to lay down on his mat when he hears the doorbell ring.

At first you’ll have a partner help you ring the doorbell, followed immediately by your cue to lay down on his mat or bed, and then followed by a great tasty treat as a reward.

Over time your dog will learn to realize that the doorbell is the cue for laying down on his mat, and you’ll want to teach him to stay their for longer and longer periods of time before he earns his reward.

You know you’re dog get’s it when you hear the doorbell ring, and on the first try your dog will go over and lay on his bed.

Try to get your guests to give the dog ZERO attention, not to look at him, and not to pet him, until you’ve sat down… at which point you can release your dog and have your guest give him the treat you snuck into their hand when they walked in (without your dog noticing).

What this will do overtime is teach your dog that people coming to the door are the CUE to do another behavior, and that he always get’s tasty rewards if he’ll hold that behavior until released.

It’ll take some time, but working on building a ‘Greeting Routine’ for your dog will help him be less territorial of your home and really help curb the barking at your front door.

Until Next Time…

Happy Training!

Chet

Related posts:

1. Stop Dog Barking: Training Your Dog To Be Quiet On Cue
2. Solution for Doorbell Barking
3. How To Stop Dog from Barking At Washing Machine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Dog Barking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.