Time Out

Recently I had an email from subscriber Frankie Wheeler which addressed a very good point which I wanted to share with you.

Frankie wrote -

"You say make a fuss of the dogs when I come home. I used to do this, and was knocked over, scratched, and the dogs started quarrelling. I read Whats-her-names book "The Dog Listener" and she recommended the 5 minute gap. You dont speak to, or make and fuss of, or have eye contact with the dogs for five minutes after you enter the house. Then when everything has calmed down you fuss them like crazy and give lots of treats etc. This method worked really well for me. The five minute gap is down to about half a minute, and my dogs are really pretty polite at last, and they seem a lot happier without the quarrelling."

Here's my reply to her -

"Hi Frankie,

You are quite right that some dogs can get terribly excited when you make a fuss of them the moment you walk through the door, and are easily capable of knocking you over. And of course the problem is compounded when you have more than one.

In cases like that your approach of ignoring them at first is absolutely spot on. I in fact have to treat my dogs in just the same way : my youngest bitch, who is nearly three, is terribly excitable, and if I fuss over her the minute I walk through the door she will be crashing into people in her excitement. She wont jump up, but she just bounces about and rushes backwards and forwards getting under your feet. She's a very solid lump and you certainly know about it if she bashes into you!

So I take the exact approach you describe (though my gap is longer than 30 seconds - probably two or three minutes). By doing that she's much calmer and it's possible to have a quiet loving word without her going into orbit! But even at that point the important thing is for it to be a _quiet_ word. If I gave her a really excitable 'gee you up' type of greeting, even after ignoring her for five or ten minutes, she'd still be climbing the walls in her excitement.

One of the things I stress in my book is the importance of the tone of voice you adopt with your dog, and also the importance of learning to 'read' your dog and understand what makes it 'tick'. They're all different and what will send one dog into raptures of delight will probably only elicit a bit of a tail wag from another!

I think that greeting your dog when you come in is one of the things you can do as you start to establish a relationship with your dog. But - like everything else to do with dog training - it's a bit of a sweeping generalisation. You must be prepared to adapt your methods to suit the individual temperaments of your dogs as what works for one wont necessarily work for another. And once you _have_ established that loving relationship it can often be a good idea to have a short break before greeting them as you walk through the door for the very reason you describe.

Thanks for taking the time to point this out."

Incidentally, Frankie - I hope you're reading this now. That reply of mine keeps getting sent back to me as undeliverable. I'd hate for you to think that I'd ignored your mail to me!

If your dog tends to be a bit manic when you walk through the door, try a few minutes of 'Time out' before you acknowledge it. It usually works a treat.

Recommended reading "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".

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