By Emma Judson
Doors are a big deal for dogs. Part of almost every dog’s separation related behaviour modification programme is likely to involve desensitising your dog to human activity around doors, like exiting, entering, opening, closing, and locking.
But let’s think about why doors are such a big deal for most dogs.
Your front door:
- People come in (Woohoo or argh scary!)
- People leave (Eek!)
- People knock on it (Startling, exciting, worrying?)
- People shove things through it (Fun, scary?)
- Humans dash to the door when people knock on it or shove things through it
- Walks happen via the door
- People dash through the door and shut it quickly in the dog’s face to prevent escape
- People slam doors
Some of this applies to internal doors, too. Both slamming and slipping through them quickly, then shutting them to prevent the dog getting through, are pretty common events.
Barriers that a dog cannot see through can increase frustration, but so can barriers that a dog can see through. For example, a glazed door with a view of a busy garden full of cats or a busy street can also build frustration.
Most of the things that build arousal, frustration, anxiety, and excitement around doors don’t actually need to happen!
They happen because we haven’t really thought about it, we slip into bad habits, or we assume that’s just the way it is.
It is easy to change some of these things though:
- Stick a note on your door telling people you will be slow to answer
- Stop rushing to the door
- Disconnect the bell and put a note saying DO NOT KNOCK, and your phone number
- Put a mailbox on the outside of the house so that the postal delivery doesn’t mean letters are shoved through the door
- If you have the choice of accessing your home through a front and a back door, pick one door that the dog leaves through, and one door that you leave through without the dog
- If your dog never goes for walks through the front door and that’s the door you leave through to go out, he will not assume he’s missing a walk, because that door does not lead to walks!
- Retrain your dog (by using a new bell) so that the sound of the bell becomes a cue to get in his bed for a treat. Only attach the new bell to the door once that behaviour is rock solid
Once we think about it, there is much we can do to reduce the stress that doors cause. The more stress we can reduce, the more capacity your dog has to cope with the stress we can’t reduce.
