Train your Dog to use a Dog Door
Recently I had the pleasure of teaching the family dog how to use a newly installed dog door. This was a horrible experience because the dog was an older dog and you know what they say about new tricks and old dogs. After we struggled to get the door in place the real struggle was about to begin.
The dog door that I installed was one made of a metal frame and a clear heavy plastic flap for the door. It also had a magnet at the bottom to seal the flap once closed which took a little bit of pressure to open on the dog’s part. Our dog was truely terrified of our new addition. If you learn anything from this article it should be this, do not force your dog through the door! Once forced through the door our dog was really adamant about never getting near the door again!
In order to show the dog how to use it I crawled trough a few times, in and out. I don’t think I impressed him at all and we waited. Sensing the total failure of my project I decided to at least leave the flap of the door open to allow him to check out the outdoors. This peaked his curiosity and he slowly began to sniff around it. I used duct tape (handy ain’t it?) and taped the door all the way up so he could come and go without it touching him. He soon ventured out through the door. This turned out to be the easy part, coming back in was for some reason harder for him.
After about a week and a half of this I lowered the flap just a bit, maybe an inch or two, so it would just graze his head and back going through. After a week at this height I lowered it another inch or so. Limbo anyone?
This turned out to be just what the dog doctor ordered. I have never seen this in any of the dog training books I have. Maybe they train their dogs a lot younger than I did. I kept this routine going until the flap was completely down. The resistance from the magnet proved tricky at first until I wedged some cardboard in the top of flap to keep it from totally closing on one side. This allowed my dog to easily push it open coming and going. After a while I was able to do away with the cardboard and tape and now have a happy traveling dog from inside to out!
All this was accomplished with a lot of patience and thankfully no additional dog supplies or fancy dog trainer! Although the dog training books have come in very handy for numerous other things this was done with just me and the dog!
Related posts: