In a recent Instagram story, I asked, “What do a door and a leash have in common?” I got several answers…
“Keeps my dog safe.”
“Portals to new dimensions.”
All were true, especially about keeping the dog safe.
The thing that the door and the leash have in common is they are two of the biggest areas where I see people arguing with their dogs and losing. What I mean by that is most people do not want their dogs barging out the door. Most people do not want their dogs pulling them on a leash. Yet, they still allow their dogs to barge out open doors. They still allow their dogs to pull them when they are on a leash.
These are the two manners that I always want to start with when I am working with a dog. I want them to understand that they cannot be pulling on the leash. If they feel pressure on the leash, there’s communication going on and they need to figure out how to relieve that pressure. If they do not know how to relieve that pressure, I have not done a decent job of teaching them how to relieve pressure. Same thing with doors.
I want them to understand that just because a door is open it does not mean they get to go running through it. People set themselves up for failure with this. They put their dog right in front of the door and then they reach over their dog trying to open the door. As they open the door, the door hits their dog and the dog jumps up and gets startled or spooked. Or what they will do is they will open the door and there is no barrier between their dog running out the door and them. They have no way to really stop that from happening. So, the dog starts thinking open door equals let’s go.
You must set yourself up to win.
I like a 3-to-5-foot boundary between the door and the dog. I put myself in the middle so that way when I do open the door if they attempt to barge out the door, I can block them. I can say, “Hey, no, that’s not what we do.” Once the door is open and they are calm, I can release them.
How I release them depends on the situation. If they are on a leash, I am going to tell them, “Let’s go”, because I do not want them to pull me out the door. If we are going out into a fenced yard and it is their chance to run free and play and do all that stuff, I am going to give them a release cue. Now they know that they can run, play, and do what they need to do out there.
If the dog is on a leash and I am holding the leash, I always want there to be slack in that leash. If there is no slack on that leash, I am not doing a decent job of communicating to my dog what I want.
If we start with training door manners and leash manners, we can then start working on them understanding other things like it is not okay to jump on people.
That is what doors and leashes have in common. It is two areas where people argue with their dogs the most and lose the most. Start training your dog to respect those and it will go a long way to bettering your relationship.
Go have fun with your dogs!