Tips to Stop Two Dogs from Door Dashing

A pair of rescue dogs, Dante and Cali a Labrador and terrier mix, needed help to stop jumping up on guests and their guardians when they arrived at the door.

After I arrived I sat down with the dogs’ guardians to learn about their main dog behavior concerns. I learned that Dante and Cali would jump up on their owners and would sometimes door dash to get out of the door. To help the dogs learn good door etiquette I taught their guardians our Claiming the Door exercise, which you can watch below.

As you can see in the video above, the dogs were barking quite a bit during the exercise. This was the first time that they practiced this exercise and barking usually stops or is very brief with repeated practice. Don’t worry about correcting their barking at this stage, you just want to focus on establishing the invisible boundary; the barking will correct itself later on with practice.

By the end of the session the dogs were able to calmly wait for their guardians to walk in the door and across the threshold without jumping up or barking. To keep up with this good behavior the guardians will want to continue to practice this exercise at any doors that they frequently use. We wrapped up this dog behavior session with Dante and Cali’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.