brigie bear Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Hey All, I have recently decided its time to bell train our dogs... They never bark to go out or whinge or scratch, just sit silently at the door waiting. It would be much easier for all of us if we introduced the bell! Yesterday I went out and bought a bunch of bells and have attached them to some twine... But now what? I have an almost 4 year old poodle x rescue and an almost 3 year old maltese x rescue (who is most likely of the bunch to be afraid of the bell!) who are 100% toilet trained.... and I have a 6 month old Pom who is 80-90% trained (I say this because if she cant get outside IMMEDIATELY she just goes on the floor at the door.) Questions... -How do I go about training 3 different dogs to use the bell when they all go out at the same time? -What do I do with Frankie who is likely to be scared of the bell at first? -Do I ring the bell for them? Or do I somehow encourage them to ring it themselves? -Any other techniques? They are all pretty intelligent and all tend to pick things up quite quickly, especially if there is a treat involved and all shake hands on command (if this helps?) Any help/tips advice much appreciated! BB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paganman Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Wouldnt it be easier to put in a dog door and teach them to use that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff'n'Toller Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 You probably won't need a cue word specifically, otherwise they may not ever ring it unless you tell them to. With your scaredy dog I would try ringing the bells muted by a tea towel and see which of the ones she reacts to the least. Here is a step-by-step for you. Clicker solutions- ring my bell. Where the article says 'click' you could say 'good' or 'yes' in a happy tone, if you want to use a clicker by all means do that but you'd need to do a little session with each dog doing a single click followed by a treat for however many repetitions it takes each dog to look at you expectantly when they hear the clicker. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brigie bear Posted September 30, 2009 Author Share Posted September 30, 2009 Wouldnt it be easier to put in a dog door and teach them to use that. I would prefer not to install a dog door actually. Having the bell training thing would work much better for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Monster Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 Thanks for starting this thread. I'm in a rental so can't install a doggy door (plus the size it would have to be would be ridiculous!) so I was thinking about this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aidan Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 I wrote a very comprehensive article on this, explaining the most fail-safe way to train this and discussing some of the pitfalls. Oddly, it is one of my most popular articles on this site: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/1171 I suggest you only put the bells up when you want your dogs to have the option to let you know they want to go out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seita Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 This article has some info too: http://www.k9force.net/index.html?row2col2=bell.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerraNik Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 There's been quite a few threads on DOL about it too... Here are a few... http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...997&hl=Bell http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...664&hl=Bell http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...308&hl=Bell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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