Graduation parties and the dog at the door

The last two weeks of May are graduation season in every Houston suburb, and a graduation party means a front door that opens forty times in an afternoon. Grandparents, teenagers, neighbors, a caterer. For a dog that jumps, barks or bolts at the door, it is forty rehearsals in a row of the exact thing you want it to stop doing, and a party is not the place to correct any of them.

What the door teaches a dog

Every time the bell rings, the dog does something, and whatever it does works. It barks and the door opens. It jumps and the guest pets it. It slips past and gets to sniff the porch. The dog is not misbehaving. It is doing what the door has always paid it to do. The routine below changes what the door pays for, and it takes about two weeks of daily reps to make it the dog's first choice.

The doorbell routine

• Bell rings. The dog goes to a place bed you can see from the door, on its own or when sent.
• You walk to the door. The dog stays on place. If it gets up, you walk back and reset it before touching the handle.
• Door opens. The dog stays on place while the guest comes in and while you talk.
• Guest is seated. You release the dog with one word, on leash the first few times, and it greets with four paws on the floor.
• Repeat with a family member ringing the bell, ten times a day, for two weeks.

The place bed does the work. A dog on a bed cannot jump, cannot bolt and rarely barks, and it has a job to hold instead of a decision to make.

Getting through the party itself

If the routine is only half built by the day, do not test it forty times. Put the dog on place for the first ten arrivals, then crate it in a quiet room with a bone for the busy hour, then bring it out on leash once the house has settled. Ask one guest to be the dog's person and hand them the leash. And leave the door routine to the adults; teenagers coming and going through the garage will not hold the standard, so make the garage door a dog-free zone with a baby gate.

Two ways to get there

A single in-home lesson, $220, is the fastest way to set the routine, because our trainer stands at your actual door with your actual doorbell and shows you where the bed goes and how to hold the standard. Most families are running it themselves by the end of the hour. For a dog that jumps, pulls and has no off switch, door boundaries and place are the core of Gold ($2,500 for the two weeks), so a dog that arrives in early May is home with the door solved before the caps go in the air.

Written by

Best Dog University Team

Board and train trainers in Cypress, Houston. 16+ years, 900+ dogs. About our team