Ring a bell

Has anyone ever trained their dog to ring a bell by the door to go out.
If anyone has how did you do it

Thanks

I think we've had this subject before.

No, I don't train my dogs to ring the bell. They are let out frequently and will also tell me they need to go out in between. Otherwise I would be letting them out every time they heard a cat, squirrel, owl, partying neighbours

I have had a look on a few sites and they say the trick is to associate the bell ringing with wanting to go to the loo or as you say they would be ring ing it all the time.

I have a dog that seems to struggle to tell me she wants to go and she likes to go out for business by herself and will not do with the other dogs around if she can help it. I heard it a couple of time that people have done it and just wondered if anyone had any practicle experience.
Karan Pryor does some instruction on it with clicker training.

Sasha doesn't have a bell but she paws at my keys to make them jingle so I can let her out Never taught her it though, she did it herself and must have realised that I come quicker than if she just sits there waiting, Samson cries to go out and comes to get us if we don't hear him x

We had a slight problem with Busby. If he was already out, he would bang on the door to be let back in - but if he wanted to go out, he would stand looking at the back door in silence so we weren't always aware of what he was asking for. But we have trained him now to bang on the door to go out as well as come back in.

We did it with a mixure of clicker training (already mentioned), praise that reinforced the command "BANG", and of course the ultimate reward - the door opening either to let him out or let him back in. Our use of BANG just sort of happened - it could just as well have been KNOCK or DOOR or anything appropriate that didn't sound like one of his other commands.


Olga

Hi Chris here is a suggestion from Shadowboxer..

tricks - Page 3

My dogs have always told me when they want to go out.
Chloe does this by putting her head on my knee (or the bed) and making a growling noise.

No I have never been tempted to become my dog's butler but there is a of course something on the market for it.

http://poochie-pets.net/Training.html

I can find plenty of links I just wondered if anyone had done it.

Generally I would not bother but for the one dog that I think I need to make life easier for her to tell me she wants to go out

Apologies in advance! I have just read through what I've typed and it is very long winded! Hopefully it will be of help/interest to you though!

I taught my girl to ring a bell to let me know she needs out. I did this because she had started mouthing our hands to tell us she needed out while we were house training/toilet training her, and I wanted a better way for her to communicate her needs, particularly in a way that was easy for others to understand if/when they are dog-sitting for us.

It takes time and consistency though, to ensure they are letting you know they need the loo and don't just want to go out to play/sniff about. I think it helped that she was/is regular as clockwork, so I worked this into our toileting routine.

If you have already taught your dog to touch targets it makes it far easier, but this "trick" is kind of how we started our target touch training. Cora was already used to clicker training, and learned very quickly to ring the bell on command within 2 short 10 minute sessions when she was about 3 months old (she's now 7.5 months old). However, transferring the ringing on command to ringing when needing to go out takes longer, and even now we are still not 100% proofed on it. She has stopped mouthing, but sometimes she will whine at the door and wait for us to appear before she rings the bell, other times she will ring it several times if we are all in different rooms. In the morning, once she sees I am awake and getting out of bed she rushes to the hallway and gives the bell a good whack!

When trying to transfer the meaning from ringing on command we did it in stages, but always practiced it according to our daily toileting "schedule."
First, still using the spoken command, we changed the "reward" from a food treat to going outdoors for a few minutes, only to do her business otherwise straight back in.
I then started using my hand signal only, without spoken command, to encourage her to ring it, again with reward being going outdoors for a few minutes to do her business or straight back in.
I then stopped this too, and waited for a minute or so for her to ring it, then if she didn't ring it I put her leash on before opening the door, and whisked her quickly out of the garden, down the short street and into the entrance to the park before letting her stop to do her business.
If she rang the bell but didn't go straight to her toileting area and do her business then I made her come back into the house straight away. This was to differentiate going out to toilet and going out for walks/fun.

As I said, we're still not 100% proofed on this, but I'd say we're around 99% there, and we did start the process just after she was house trained, to positively encourage a specific method of communication instead of negatively discouraging her mouthing method (I didn't want her to misinterpret a "no" when mouthing like this as a reason not to tell us she needs out). I do believe it helped us in that respect, and I'm sure the last 1% is probably down to myself or my other half slipping up on consistency every now and then.

I hope this makes some sense, but really, youtube is a goldmine of other people demonstrating the teaching of this "trick." It is where I learned how to teach it to Cora.

One thing I would think about though before teaching it, is what kind of bell do you want your dog to ring. If I were to start again, I would use an electronic doorbell. As it is, we have a big ol' brass ship-type/last orders bell which looks pretty, but it really isn't what you want to hear first thing in the morning or last thing at night!!

Thank you thats great and your last bit made me laugh