The Dog Wants To Go Out....!

I've been reading a thread on an internet message board recently about training your dog to ring a bell installed at the back door when it wants to be let out.

The general idea seems to be that it helps avoid any little 'accidents' in the house, and also avoids the dog having to go through the discomfort of not being able to go to the toilet when it wants to.

I have to be perfectly honest and tell you that I can't think of anything worse than a dog that gets the 'garden-on-demand' treatment. Although I've never come across one of the 'doggy bells' in question, I've frequently seen the low tech equivalent where the dog barks or whines at the back door. Or even worse, where the barking and/or whining is accompanied by the dog scratching at the door.

Have you ever seen the damage done to a door over the course of time by a dog that scratches at it several times a day? In my student days I spent six months sharing a house with someone who owned a boisterous young spaniel. This dog was an accomplished door scratcher and the bottom eighteen inches or so of the inside of the front door had not only been stripped of most of the paintwork by his attention, but also it was criss crossed with deep grooves where his claws had gouged into the wood.

These days even the smallest of houses can cost a frightening amount of money. Why on earth would any sane person allow - let alone encourage - their dog to wilfully damage the investment they have tied up in their property in that way?

I am opposed to the idea of the dog dictating when it is to go out for a number of reasons. I think the main one is that many dogs would 'abuse' the system.

What I mean by that is that if the dog only rang the bell, barked, whined or did whatever the system entailed once every five or six hours I could just about accept that. If it went out, did what it needed to do then quietly settled down again I daresay I could probably get used to that.

But I've hardly ever seen any evidence of dogs actually doing that. To be precise I've only ever once seen a dog like that. It was an elderly lady's 'lap dog' and so adored being secreted somewhere about its mistress's voluminous person that it was loathe to spend any time away from her.

She was too frail to take it for walks and it was completely averse to any form of exercise! So periodically it would give a little squeak and she would open the door for it. A few moments later it would yap once and that was the signal for it to be let back inside, whereupon it would waddle straight back to mistress who would immediately scoop it up again.

Although it is not a system of dog ownership that I particularly approve of, I have to say in all honesty that the dog seemed blissfully happy and its relationship with its owner worked perfectly.

However, on the other side of the coin I have seen numerous other examples of dogs asking to be let out where, frankly, they are just taking the p**s.

They ask to go out and then have a mooch round the garden looking for their ball. Or they want to go out because they know the neighbour's cat usually strolls through the garden about now and they fancy a bit of sport. Or they want to see if they can find where they left that bone. Or maybe they fancy having a bit of a dig in that lovely dry dusty soil underneath the big tree. Or....

I'm sure you get the picture. I know dogs that are like yo-yo's. They ask to be let out. Thirty seconds later they're ready to come back in. Two minutes after that and they want to go out again. They go out, come back in, then after only another minute or two they're hassling their owner to let them out again. And this can just go on and on.

If you want to be a slave to your dog then by all means pander to it in this way. But trust me when I tell you it really doesn't have to be like this. I've kept dogs for donkeys years and they've always been treated the same when it comes to going out. They always go out a minimum of three times a day, but only when I'm good and ready.

I take them out for a long walk as soon as I get downstairs in the morning. I take them out for another long walk at some point in the late afternoon/early evening. And I let them out into the garden just before I go to bed at night.

Sometimes they get to go out more than that. For instance at the weekends I'm often trundling around the village on various little errands and I'll sometimes take them with me. And in the summer the back door is frequently left open during hot weather, meaning the dogs are free to come and go as they please.

But their staple day to day routine that they know they can always depend on come hell or high water is three times a day when they can go to the toilet.

And believe me when I say that all dogs are perfectly capable of lasting that long in normal conditions.

Obviously there could be exceptions to the rule such as if the dog is unwell, but ordinarily a fit and healthy adult dog will manage perfectly well on that sort of routine.

I might add that if I had more time I would probably choose to give them another walk sometime around the middle of the day, but work commitments have made it difficult to be able to do that on a regular basis.

I'm also opposed to the 'garden-on-demand' system because I think that far from helping to avoid accidents, it might inadvertently cause them.

How come?

Imagine you've taught your dog that you'll always let it out when it wants to go. If that happens to be fairly frequently it will not have developed a great deal of control over its bladder - there will have been no need.

What happens if the dog wants to go out when you're in the middle of an important telephone conversation?

Or what if you've just had an accident and are on crutches and it's imperative you try and rest your leg?

Or your young child has just fallen and cut its head open. You're already trying to console its screaming at the same time as call for an ambulance.

Or how about when you're cooking for an important dinner party and you've just got to a crucial moment when you have to keep constantly stirring the roux for another two minutes or the sauce will go all lumpy?

Perhaps none of these things ever happen to you, but I can envisage something similar happening in my household. And presumably if you can't get to the door when the dog tells you it needs to go out then it's only a matter of time before that weaker than normal bladder gives out.

Or at the very least I suspect that the barking/whining/bell ringing will get louder and more frenzied, which in itself would drive me to distraction.

Maybe I'm grossly over-exaggerating. I don't know as I've never allowed any of my dogs to be brought up that way.

Remember what I'm always saying in my book - it's your dog and you're the one who has to live with it. So you make the rules. If you're happy letting your dog out whenever it wants to go then fine. That's none of my business and I'm certainly not about to say that you shouldn't do it.

But what I _am_ saying is that I would never even contemplate letting my dogs dictate my day in that way, and there's no need for you to either if you don't want to.

Obviously the initial housetraining is different. You can't possibly expect young puppies to have the necessary bladder control to be able to go long periods without a toilet trip. If you've read my book you'll know I go into the whole subject of toilet training in detail.

But once you've got to the stage that the pup is completely toilet trained there's no reason at all why you can't implement the sort of system that I use with my dogs. It's all down to how you treat the dog from the start.

Introduce it to the sort of routine you want to follow early on in life. Be absolutely consistent about always taking the dog out a set number of times each day as a minimum. That way the dog will quickly come to realise that it simply has to wait until walk time before it can go to the toilet.

You don't need to sacrifice your door! There's no need to have to listen to the barking or whining entreaties of your dog! And there's definitely no need to waste your money on a 'doggy bell', heaven forbid!!

Recommended reading "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".

If you'd like to receive articles like this on a regular basis sign up for my free Dog Training Blueprint email newsletter which goes out once every month. Sign up now and I'll send you a free copy of "Top Ten Tips For Having An Obedient Dog". To join the list just fill in your name and email address and click the 'Send me the tips' button -

(If you prefer not to subscribe until you know a bit more about what sort of dog training advice you're likely to receive, you're welcome to read a typical selection of comments from other subscribers first.) This is what other readers of the Dog Training Blueprint email newsletter have to say about it. Also read through some of my other dog training articles.

Return to the main article index
Read what you'll learn from "Dog Training Blueprint To Success"

Webmasters - If you have your own dog training site, you are welcome to reproduce this article provided you reproduce it in full, without editing it in any way. Furthermore, at the end of it you must also agree to put the following resource box (without the speech marks) with an active, working link back to this site. If you are not prepared to do this you may not reproduce any of my work. Here is the wording you must use -

"This article is the copyright of Andrew Chastney, author of Dog Training Blueprint to Success. To read more of his articles and get a free copy of 'Top Ten Tips For Having An Obedient Dog' go to www.dogtrainingblueprint.com"

The section to hyperlink back is www.dogtrainingblueprint.com as I've done in the example here. In case you are not sure how to do this, simply copy the following -

(a href="http://www.dogtrainingblueprint.com")www.dogtrainingblueprint.com(/a)

and replace the brackets with the 'triangular brackets' that are used to open and close html tags.