How to Train a Little Dog to Stop Door Dashing

By: Sam Kanouse

Published Date: November 16, 2017

Ginger - How to Train a Little Dog to Stop Door Dashing

For this Omaha dog training session we worked with 2 year-old Miniature Schnauzer named Ginger, training her to stop door dashing and learn good dog door manners.

When I arrived Ginger was excited to see me but quickly settled down once I came into the home. When I sat down to chat with the guardians I learned that she didn’t have a lot of rules in place. Dogs thrive in environments that are predictable with rules so they know what they shouldn’t do but more importantly what they can do to make their guardians happy. I suggested a few new rules: sitting before going through the door and giving Ginger a maximum of three minutes to eat. If any food is left in her bowl put the food back in the dog food bag until her next meal time.

One of the guardian’s main dog behavior concerns is Ginger’s door dashing. To help Ginger stop running through the door I taught the guardians how to set up an invisible boundary around the door in the foyer. This will teach Ginger to stay outside of that boundary and thus not run through the door. To see how I accomplished this, you can watch the video below.

As you can see in the video, Ginger made very quick progress! This video was taken during her second run through for this exercise and she quickly learned to stay behind the boundary with a few corrections. I want to encourage the guardians to practice this daily with the family to create a low-stress practice sessions. This way when they do have real guests arrive everyone, including Ginger will have a lot of practice using good door manners!

By the end of the dog behavior session, Ginger was learning to stay respectfully away from the door when guests entered and reduced her barking. I want to encourage the guardians to use our Escalating Consequences to disagree with Ginger and use our Petting with a Purpose technique to reward her for good behavior. We wrapped up this session with Ginger’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.

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This post was written by: Sam Kanouse