An Easy Way to Teach a Dog to Wait at The Door

For this Playa Del Ray in-home dog training session we teach 2 year-old lab pointer mix Maple’s mom how to teach a dog to wait at the door.

In addition to her door dashing problem, Maple gets very excited for her walks but is also fearful of dogs and people she doesn’t know.

We started the session outside. I wanted to show her mom an easy way to help a fearful dog meet people in a positive way. We did this by creating a set up where the environemnt set Maple up for success.

Anytime you have a fearful dog, you need to do anything you can to help them feel comfortable. It’s important to remember that the fear is an emotional response and not an intentional action.

A very common mistake many people make when meeting a fearful dog is trying to pet or talk to the dog to help them feel comfortable. But for fearful dogs, the best thing you can do is ignore them, give them space and allow them to come to you on their own terms.

I adopted some soft body language and used a few dog behavior tricks to make sure that Maple felt comfortable meeting me. You can watch our initial introduction in the video below.

Later in the session I recommended that Maple’s guardian repeat this process anytime she has a new friend come to visit.

With Maple feeling comfortable and confident, we headed upstairs so that we could get started.

I started off by going over the importance of using marker words. This is the fundamental building block of all modern dog training so it’s always the first thing I cover with my in-home clients.

Next time went over a hand targeting exercise to help the guardian practice her timing as well as explain an easy way to introduce command cues. When we wrapped up the exercise I suggested the guardian make a list of all of the commands that Maple knows that she can test and confirm that she has the verbal cue down.

Next we went over one of my favorite dog behavior lessons, something I’d like to call celebrating. This is probably the easiest way to train any dog, provided you do it consistently. I recommended Maple’s guardian and partner tell each other “Celebrate” when she offers a desired behavior to help them get into a habit of celebrating.

Since Maple is a high energy dog, we went over a number of easy ways to exercise dogs without going outside. I recommended that she start feeding Maple out of a snuffle mat, get an Omega paw tricky treat ball and went over a box enrichment exercise that I like. This will help her distract Maple away from demand barking when she doesn’t get her way.

We wrapped up the basics portion of our session by going over an easy way to stop dogs from barking at sounds. It will be important for the guardian to practice this exercise at Maple’s pace. If Maple barks, that’s her indication that she’s moving too fast and needs to back up a step.

How to Teach a Dog to Wait at The Door

Living in a large apartment complex, Maple has to transverse a couple of long corridors to get from outside to her home. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Mabel gets very anxious transitioning from her apartment to the outdoors because of her fear of other dogs.

That is something more complex to work on in her first session so I recommended the guardian find a large open outdoor location where she can practice the engage disengage game to help maple create more of a positive emotional response.

While the Engage game is a great way to help dogs who are reactive to other dogs, it does take time. I knew I needed to come up with some tips to help Maple feel more comfortable transitioning from her home to the outdoors.

It’s possible that Maple’s reactivity is enhanced by her excitement of getting ready to go for a walk or running through the open door. Intense emotions can often amplify other behaviors, so teaching Maple to stay calm while being leashed up or the door being opened can actually help her feel more relaxed inside the building. That’s when I decided to show her guardian how to teach a dog to wait at the door.

I handed my camera to Maple guardians so that I could show her an easy way to stop door dashing by showing her how to teach a dog to wait at the door. I also went over a tip on how to keep an dog from getting excited when the leash and harness are put on.

If your dog likes to door dash or gets too excited for a walk, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below.

It will be important for Maple‘s guardian to practice this exercise in slow progressions. People often get impatient and move faster than their dog can handle. But if you want to teach a dog to wait at the door, you need to go in slow, preogresisve steps at a speed the dog can handle.

It’s important to remember that we’re dealing with an emotional response and some classical conditioning of the sight of the leash and harness.

This desensitization and counter conditioning exercise will help Maple stop getting over excited for walks. If your pup has this problem its wise to teach a dog to wait at the door to help curb and limit their emotions from getting too high. This lesson is also a great way for  a dog to develop more impulse control.

In time, Maple will be more relaxed and not looking to run down the corridor each time her guardian takes her out for a walk. That’s one bennefit and reason why I like to teach a dog to wait at the door instead of zooming through it.

Once the guardian has taught Maple to not run through an open door, I recommended that she starts practicing leaving the apartment, but only taking a step or two before returning home. Once Maple realizes that every exit through the door doesn’t include the guantlet of the long corodors and stairs, she will feel less anxious. This will also help redcuce Maple’s mom’s anxiety as she just wants to look out for her girl.

Leaving for short, incomplete journeys out the door is another desensitization variant that will help Maple with her dog  anxiety of walking from the apartment to the exterior of the apartment complex.

Just like the exercise when we teach a dog to wait at the door, only moving a step or two further each practice rep, Maple will stop rushing.  This will happen once she realizes  that just because she gets the harness or leash is put on, or steps out of the apartment, it doesn’t mean she has to walk all the way to the outside.

Towards the end of the session we also went over some kennel training tips. Maple was demonstrating clear cut off signals anytime the guardian walked near the room that her crate was in.

I shared another video with the guardian on our 18 levels of crate training and suggested that she start crating Maple and then sitting in the room on the floor next to her. Many people only put their dogs in a crate when they are leaving and over time, this creates a negative association with going inside the kennel.

It may seem counter intuitive to practice having a dog stay in the crate while you’re home, but that’s actually the best way to practice. You help the dog understand that just because they’re in the crate, it doesn’t mean you’re leaving. Once the dog makes this conection it helps them to stay inside a crate calmly.

The more that a dog practice is being calm inside the crate, the more of a positive emotional response is developed.

We ended up going a little over time in this session and Maple was getting a little cranky due to lack of sleep. But I wanted to make sure that the guardian was going to be able to remember all of the positive dog training tips we covered in this in-home Marina del Rey dog training session.

I sat down on the floor with Maple and had her guardian film me going through a Roadmap to Success summary of what we covered as well as a a few more pointers on how to introduce Maple to people in a positive way.

You can check out the summary by watching the roadmap to success summary below.