[nagdu] I gotta go out

[Julie J.]

Danielle's description is what I intended to do.  Now for what actually 
happened!

I live in a tiny town with no craft and hobby store.  The kind of bells I 
wanted, the large round jingle bells, are only available around Christmas 
because they are sold as a Christmas decoration.   When I found them I 
bought them immediately and hung them on the back door.  I figured I'd get 
to the training part in a couple of days, but was busy with all the things 
that go with the holidays and my son's birthday is in there too.   In the 
meantime I just gave the bells a jingle right before I opened the door to 
take the dogs out.  I did zero training.  Just tap the bells while saying, 
"outside" and opened the door.  Within two days both Monty and Belle were 
jingling the door bells to go out pretty consistently.

A warning about the bells...smart dogs catch on to the fact that when they 
ring the bells a person comes immediately.  They will put 2 and 2 together 
and will start ringing the bells when they want you to come to attend to 
other needs, like to fill the water bowl, food, to play or just to say their 
bored and want to go out to goof around.   To me it's not a huge deal.  I 
figure at least we are communicating and we can figure out what the need is 
when I get to the door.

HTH
Julie