Meeting house visitors calmly

[Chris]

Just over a week ago we had a second dog to join our other dog. Previously with the first dog, when we entered the house (nobody else in the house), we dealt with excited and loud greetings by ignoring until quiet and calm. This usually took less than a minute. We do the same now that we have two dogs-again it takes less than a minute for both dogs to calm down (the latest dog taking roughly a count of 20). But, this is a lot less effective when there is already someone else already in the house. We have tried humans ignoring (no eye contact etc), ignoring by the last arriving human with an earlier human sternly instructing 'stop' and both humans instructing the dogs to stop. Both dogs know "no", "sit" and "shh"(etc). We do not use food for this as it would add to the excitement? I realise now that this has been the behavior of our first dog, it is more of an issue now because it's twice the noise, and from meeting the latest dog in his foster home the indication is that he is also an excitable, noisy greeter. I am confused by the difference between the dogs being alone and when one of us is in the house with them. I thought that ignoring them should get the same, quick results whether alone or not (and eventually a reliable calm greeting)? I understand that dogs learn behavior from rewards, what I can't work out is what rewards our dogs think that they are getting when they have human company and then a new visitor. We don't mind ignoring them and waiting longer for them to calm if that is the right thing to do, but in the short term it does seem like letting them get away with poor behavior.
I am thinking of putting a note on our door explaining that we are training our dogs-please ignore them completely, but I don't think that this could work for practical reasons. Rosie our first dog is in advanced obedience class and Casper will be starting classes very soon (possibly tonight).
We want our dogs to greet visitors to the house calmly-what are the tips, what are we doing wrong, please?

Chris

[LeviBevi]

Ah

Welcome to the wonderful world of 'Pack'

When dog A is on his own he has no backup and so his behaviour (barking) has less impact
Now add dog B now he has backup and some one who is egging him on

In my house (5/6 dogs at present) we have high energy dogs (JRT's)
the knock on the door results in a deafening riot of barking and bundling towards the door if not checked it can turn into to full blown dog fight (especially amongst my working dogs)
This tends not to happen when I am in the house but if my OH is there alone it can be quite intense - I think that is because he is not as door-strict as I am

What we did was -
take each dog and train independently
We have a mat for each dog in the hall or we send them to their respective crates

Train a 'mat' command
so the dog knows where you want it to be

one person out side and one inside the house - sitting in the front room
outside person knocks on the door - dog reacts
person in the house goes to the door and sends the dog to the mat

the person opens the door - you must not allow the dog to break from the mat
he has to stay there until released
have lots of patience and be prepared to start from the beginning alot
so the person who is outside will need to be prepared to get cold/wet etc.

the dog has to stay put and you allow the person into your house - they need to ignore the dogs
after a few minutes and only when the dog is calm do you release
this is why going to the crate is good as you can shut the door if necessary

once you have both dogs doing what you want independently you need to start the training with both of them
this is harder but focus on each - once one is in position (I tend to get the most excitable out of the way first) then get the next one and so on

after a while they know where they are meant to be

After a lot of training - if the door knock happens at our house - the dogs have a bark at the front door (afterall that is their job - to ward off people) then they automatically got the their respective postions and wait. with the odd gruff!
the trouble usually starts again when we introduce a new rescue - then it is game on again!
but a quick train the new one and a refresher for the others and we settle down again

good luck

[Chris]

Hi LeviBevi and thanks for the detailed post.

First off- I had been told that having a second dog is very nice, and I have to agree. It is so nice- more than twice the pleasure!
We will train each dog separately, I can see the logic in doing it this way. The first dog, Rosie is trained in the 'wait' command-so we will take her to a spot and make her 'wait '. Rosie isn't trained in a command that will send her to a particular spot (mat). Will we be able to adapt by taking her to a stop and leaving her there? Or can you describe how to train 'mat' command, please? Does it help if the spot is out of sight of the door? Or does it help the dog if it can see a visitor (but not move until released- I'm wondering if the dogs level of excitement is slightly less)? Sorry about all the questions.

Although we haven't had Casper (the second dog for two weeks yet), it looks as though he will learn quickly- he is already quite good with the 'wait' command (amongst others- he has a lovely nature and wants to please).

I assume that if the dog breaks from the spot, one of us should take the dog back to the spot and re-command? Is the release to meet the visitor the reward for waiting on the mat ( I know that the dog must always be calm)?

It sounds ideal in your household I imagine 5 or more dogs getting into their positions, all waiting ready to be released! We will try to get somewhere near to this!

Chris

[LeviBevi]

hi

Is your second dog a rescue?

Okay - MAT
get a helper - they will be the food dispenser for the initial runs
you put the 'mat' onto the floor
you hold the dog near you - lightly by the collar
the helper will walk up to the dog and show the treat - don;t give it to the dog
they walk to the Mat
and they hold a tasty treat in their closed hand so the dog can not get it
you release the dog with a 'Mat'
they run to the mat and as soon as they get there - the treat is delivered by the human dispenser

after they get the idea
you can put the treat on the mat and remove the human
then release the dog - Mat
he should go there and get the treat

now you can adapt to clicker training if you dont want to use a treat

with LeviBevi I combined the two
initially I trained the Mat command to a clicker-
I pre-loaded the clicker - by clicking it and treating so her learnt that click meant treat (Praise is a treat in my house) or something was right
I put the mat down in the kitchen and as soon as he choose to go there - I clicked and treated
and when he got to the right place he got a click to say 'yep that's right' and a treat to reinforce
then I introduced the command Mat
then I moved the mat into the crate and said Mat - then, when he went to it - click and treat
reinforce for a few days
and then do the door training

My other 2 rescues/fosters
they were trained to the mat and trained with a wait command
so a knock will result in a 'mat', once they get there a 'wait' command

if they break - I close the door and start the exercise again from the very beginning

don't forget this is an exercise - which you need to practice to get right

the real life stuff is just additional training

if you knock on my door - I used to yell 'hang on while I get the dogs'
but this is the equivalent of you joining with the barking which can make things worse
but now I just walk up quietly and say Mat and they all scatter to their relevant places
One of mine(my alpha- oldest) is in the hall - LeviBevi is in his crate in the kitchen and two are in the front room by the wall and one is crated in the dining room - so as you can see anywhere will do
the ones by the wall were there are I used to use a hook on the skirting board to help with the waits/stays and now they just know that is their place
obviously you have to ensure that they don't break before you allow it - so you decide where is best for you

then I go into the exercise - the call will just have to wait
they can hear that you are busy with the dogs and generally they wait
I've not had any one walk off yet

casper is still in your honeymoon period so this is a good time to set the ground rules and enforce them
then he knows exactly where he is and he should settle in nicely
if he is a rescue - I always say that it is going to take about 6 months before you really get to know his personality and about a year to sort out any big issues


The release is from me after my visitor is safely in the house - the reward is being able to move around again
but they should not charge or harrass the visitor
they are asked to ignore the dogs for at least 5 mins - after all they have come to see me and not the dogs
I vary the time before I release as this helps stop the dogs from pre-empting the command and breaking

hope that explains it okay for you

[LeviBevi]

Opps

forgot to say that the initial Mat - training can help with a wait too
as you can get them to wait before they get to the mat so will help with calmness before the release

3 commands that I would say should be practiced everyday are
Come
Leave
Wait

I have a stop command - but it is very specific and only ever used on conjunction with chasing of my cats
I do have terriers after all
for other livestock etc - I use the leave command

sorry gone off track now

[Chris]

Brilliant post. Thank you very much.

Casper is a rescue, but not a stay. In brief he was put with members of his owners family when is owners emigrated, but he ended-up being un-wanted and was then put with Pro Dogs Direct, who fostered him until we came along . Rosie our first dog is also a rescue (found as a stray on the streets). We have had her for 15 months. Reminds me of the debt of gratitude owed to all the people who work with pet rescue organisations.

Thank you for all the great descriptions of how to train for the behaviour that we want. Much appreciated and also very useful for anyone else in a similar situation.

Chris

[margaretschild]

Your information and advice is excellent, I have two 9 month old GSD pups who go nuts when anyone enters the house particullarly my mother-in-law (no jokes please) Beauty in particular adores her and jumps all over her, the problem is the mother in law is 76 years old and not good on her feet. Beauty will do anything to get to her, once she has arrived at said mother in law she jumps on the sofa (they are allowed on the sofas) and climbs over the back of my poor mother in law, now I presume that this is a dominance thing as once she is in the position she looks at me as if to say Ha! got here and I'm boss.

Now, I try not to spoil my dogs and I am a firm believer in well trained dogs, they understand and obey sit, wait, come and off. But this has got me beat. I did try to stop this when they were smaller but I was firmly told they are all right leave them alone. So I did now it has become a big problem (as I had a feeling it would)

We do not have mats or crates but they do have their beds in the utility room where the back door is, would it be ok to train them to go to their beds or will it cause a problem at bedtime?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Linda

[Chris]

Just re-reading my post and I have noticed that it could be interpreted that Rosie is our first dog and Casper is our second. In fact Scruffy was our first dog who we had for 17 years until she died in May 2008. She was also a rescued dog. I know this just detail, but because we still miss her I do not want to forget her memory . We had Rosie soon after we lost Scruffy, and just over two weeks ago we had Casper .

Chris

[margaretschild]

I have just watched it's me or the dog on TV and what a coincidence the article was about 2 old English Sheepdogs doing more or less exactly what my pups are doing. Everything she said and did backed up the earlier post on this thread so guess what I am starting this afternoon

Once again thanks for the info

[margaretschild]

I have had to come on and tell you of my sucess this afternoon

After my last post I was determined to begin the training that will keep my house sane?????

Well I am very happy and proud to say that after only about 1.5 hours my pups will now wait at the back door while I open it, close it again and return to them, they will aslo lie down on command - a command I have always had a problem with. Now I know that I am alone in the house and it will be a different matter when there are other people here - but I feel like I have started pushing the stone up the hill and I WILL get to the top

Clever dogs eh!

[Sonia]

Clever you as well

Sonia

[margaretschild]

Thank you,

It will be a while before things are really calm but we all have to start somewhere and I feel like I have had a real good start.

I was really motivated by the above posts 1. because they have the same problem as me and 2. because someone gave me a starting point.

[janz]

What a great thread. Good positive vibes here, good on you!

[Chris]

I was really motivated by the above posts

I'm very pleased to hear that by posting my questions and getting a very good reply (thank you LeviBevi)that some else has also benefited.
When I get frustrated with what my dogs are doing, I remind myself that it is up to me to help my dogs to learn to behave in a manner that is acceptable to me.

Chris

[margaretschild]

Good Morning Chris, LeviBevi and all,

Thank you for your support while I am trying to train my Girls to behave, and Chris you are quite right it is up to us owners to ensure that our dogs behave in a manner that is not only acceptable to us but to others as well.

I had a bit of a nightmare when my hubby came home last night as the girls saw him through the glass in the door and chaos broke out. As this was the first time I had tried the exercise with anybody actually using the door I was not that surprised. The training is continuing today.

During the night we heard a strange noise, this was the dogs chewing the wooden doors yet again! So I have resorted to drastic measures I pasted a Chillie powder mix on all the areas they have chewed this consisted of, 6 pickled chillies, 2 heaped teaspoons of chillie powder, 1 heaped teaspoon of ground ginger and a little water. Funnily enough they went to sleep and the chewing stopped.

My problem came when I tried to put them back into bed, Beauty in particular was very stubborn and would not lie down, she would sit but that was it. At this point I lost my temper and went to bed, yes I have to admit it she won, but this morning when they were getting very excited as they do in the mornings I just said very calmly lie down and they did both of them - I was amazed, they have not forgotten so this intensive training really does work.

Sharing my ups and downs with the pups as they grow really helps as I know that I am not alone with these problems, by using this site not only do I get to moan but I get lots of help and advice as well.

So thank you to K9 you are invaluable

Linda

[Richard]

im glad even K9 is a little quiet its still working well,

thanks everyone


Rich

[LeviBevi]

My problem came when I tried to put them back into bed, Beauty in particular was very stubborn and would not lie down, she would sit but that was it. At this point I lost my temper and went to bed, yes I have to admit it she won,

Sorry to hear that you lost your temper - I know that sometimes the little darlings can be very trying
What I tend to do if they are being stubborn - is just to take a deep breath and count to ten
If it is very late or there just is not time - I would have accepted the sit in the bed as acceptable

Generally if they are being naughty in the night
I will be quite firm and put them back to bed
but I would just use Bed rather than an other command
as if they dont want to lie down and be comfortable - that is their choice
so long as they go to bed and stay there quietly

wishing you the best

[Chris]

I would just use Bed rather than an other command
as if they dont want to lie down and be comfortable - that is their choice
so long as they go to bed and stay there quietly

I use the command "bed" also and don't add to it if there is any stubbornness I have more chance of being obeyed. Try to plan for success!

Chris

[margaretschild]

Hi all,

Yes thanks for that, the next morning I realised what I had done and you are right after all she did go into her bed and I was a little unfair to expect more after all it was about 3.00am!

Anyway we are friends again now and the training is still on going, and they are both doing well.