[nagdu] I gotta go out

[Tami Jarvis]

That was how it worked with Mitzi. I hung the bells on the door, jingled 
the bells when we went out, then she started jingling the bells to go 
out. Every three minutes. I started ignoring the bells, so that made the 
bells sort of useless. /lol/ I thought about dredging them up or getting 
new ones (I think I gave my first ones away) with this new puppy, but 
the thought of three dogs ringing the bells was not inspiring. The girls 
have their ways of letting me know when they want out, and their 
bladders are on nice, consistent adult schedules. Loki has gotten pretty 
good at just going to the door if we're in the family room. If I'm in 
the office, he will poke me with his nose or put his paw on my leg to 
let me know, though sometimes he will do that just for a bit of 
attention. He's getting more consistent. Every now and then, he will try 
another strategy which I don't catch on to, so oops. Sigh. It's one 
thing knowing this sort of thing happens with adolescents and it's not 
the end of the world but another thing when it's my adolescent, since I 
know he knows better.

At least I let myself in for this by choice. If I'd gone to get a fully 
trained adult dog and had to go through it, I wouldn't be happy, either. 
You're doing a good job, Tracy, even though it must be just super 
frustrating sometimes.

Tami



On 08/07/2015 09:29 AM, Julie J. via nagdu wrote:
> 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
>
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