So, it was so easy (ha!) to teach Bessie to ring the doggie doorbells by the door to go out. But now she does it constantly. Sitting her listening to her whine and hit them repeatedly right now, even though she was out about ten minutes earlier. Outside is fun. She gets to be off-leash, no boundaries right now as she sticks very close to Burke, who's on the invisible fence. She loves to go searching for stuff, brings me sticks and random things she finds, digs when it's thawed (sigh), and she and Burke play boisterously and often out there. The problem is I have no idea when she needs to pee/poop and when she just wants to play. I have watched her play for 20 minutes outside, then come in for a few minutes, then need to go out, and lo and behold, she'll pee or poop. Why didn't she do that during the first 20 minutes? I think she just gets distracted and she sees it as an option that is always available. It's driving me nutty and I need to rein in the ringing. Help? I googled and saw some talk of "stimulus control" but I don't know how to apply this to the situation that exists.
Well done for teaching Bessie to ring the bells I taught my rescue dog Charlie to ring the bell as he couldn't let me know when he wanted to go outside for the toilet, he was 9 months old and quickly caught on that if he rang them I would go to the door immediately and he would want to go outside to play, so I only let him out for the toilet and nothing else. If one of us wants to go out and play with him we call him and we go out so the bell is not used. Charlie knows now the bell is for "I need the loo" and nothing else So when Bessie rings the bell go with her then you will know if she goes to the loo, if she does or doesn't come back inside after a few minutes, no playing. If she rings again you will have to repeat this until she does go and then call her inside. This will take some repeats until she gets the message that the bell means "loo", playing means you go with her and no bell Hope that's OK.
Many people give up on the bells as it is very easy for the pup to learn 'I ring the bell and get to go out' as that is the initial reward regardless of whether they toilet or not I would be tempted to remove the bells and take her out regularly for toiletting and when you want for playtime and reward whenever she pees or poos. As she gets older she'll be ablenough to let you know when she needs to go or you will have picked up her signals
'Stimulus control' means putting a behaviour on cue so that it only happens when you ask for it. That defeats the purpose of a bell, which is a cue for the dog to use to ask you for a behaviour. You want the dog to choose when to use it, you don't cue it. Of course the dog wants your response to the bell to be under perfect stimulus control I'd either remove the bell or follow Helen's advice about only allowing loo trips in response to the bell. No playing or walks or anything else.
A pen would be handy for training "bells mean toilet". If she rings the bell, she goes into her toilet pen. It alway makes me shudder when people talk about using bells. Even the imagined sound puts the hairs up on the back of my neck
Works well for us. He did try ringing the bell just for play outside early on, but knowing that he just went outside to pee/potty, I would just ignore it. So no bell abuse.
I'm impressed that she learned how to use them so quickly, you taught her well! Hopefully the next step is she'll only ring them for a loo break (great advice given here). If the bells are annoying, could you "de-bell" them and just have a tinkling (remove the inner bits)? When Snowie bumps our keyring to go out (funny that "ring" is in the word!), it's a very gentle tinkling sound. Mind you, he bumps it go out for whatever reason (to lie in the sun, loo break, to inspect his bone, etc), but he'd rather be with us inside than by himself outside, so it's not that frequent as to be annoying.
The noise is fine - it's a gentle soft jingle, not jarring or anything, at least to my ears. It's not a big bell, but a set of small jingle-type bells. The problem is I'm not getting a thing done with letting her in/out and if I don't respond, not only does she continue to ring, but she whines and paws at the door itself eventually. She'll come and stare at me, then go back and whine at the door. So I will definitely try removing the bells, but I'm afraid she knows enough to know she wants to go out and will ask another way if no bells. She even rings them to let Burke *in* (he doesn't know how to ring them) because sometimes she'll come in but he'll still be outside. She must hear him -- I'll look out and sure enough he's sitting there waiting to come in! And get this. It happened 3 times so it's not a fluke, but the first time I was sure it was just chance. I sit on the sofa to work, often, and sometimes have food nearby on a sofa table. She whined at me for the food. No way, girlie. Ignored. A few minutes later, she rang the bell. I got up to let her out, but she just used the bell to move to me to the door! As soon as I got up, she snatched my food! Three times! (In the space of a couple of months.) She is a smart one. I guess I'll have to go back to on-leash walks for potty only when she rings the bells. It's been winter and I threw my back out, so on-leash work has been nonexistent lately. I've just been letting her out and while I do keep an eye on her as best I can, I don't always know if she's peed or pooped.
That's one smart dog! Imagine what you could train her to do?!! It also seems like she's doing a good job training you!
Sorry I have to disagree with that statement. Impulse control , or self control, is a dog learning an alternative behaviour and does not rely upon it being put on cue so it happens only when you ask for it, although tat may be the case. For example, a dog lunges at cars as it walks along the road. As this I likely to be a dangerous behaviour you would work towards training the dog to offer an alternative behaviour but you would not put lunging at cars on a cue, would you? A couple of interesting articles on 'impulse control' for interest http://www.clickertraining.com/training-impulse-control-the-default-sit http://blog.smartanimaltraining.com...ys-to-teaching-dogs-calm-and-polite-behavior/
Out of curiousity, after taking him out for potty I let him in and i closed the sliding door where the bell was. I started knocking at the door and he was wagging his tail and started bopping the bells and then looking over to his mommy. I guess he wanted to let me in!
Yes, that's what Bessie does if Burke is outside waiting to come in. She'll catch sight of him in the window or hear him whine and go ring the bells then run to me, back to the bells, back to me, until I let him in. She is one determined pup. She has been a lot better about the bells the past couple of days, because I decided that and her overall hyperactivity was due to too little stimulation as she has suddenly matured (nine months). Added a walk into her day and some fetch and tug and learning the names of her toys and she's really calmed down again. I had both dogs today fetching balls in the house to where only the one whose name I called would fetch it. That has been a problem before if I have both of them - they both go for it, Burke lets Bessie have it but gets pouty and jealous and starts trying to roughhouse with her instead. So in this case the solution was not even stopping her from ringing the bells directly, but looking at the reason behind the behavior. She wanted to go out constantly, but why? Boredom. Then she'd get bored outside, come in, rinse, repeat.
Aren't impulse control and stimulus control two different things? From "How Dogs Learn": And So, as Rachael describes, a cue would be the discriminative stimulus if, without it, the behaviour does not get reinforced.
Annie use to go through the cat flap when she was small to go for a p, but now she is too big, she opens and close it to let us know that she want to go out to p. When she did this just to go out to play (and she had just been out for a p) we just took no notice of her and she stopped doing it. I would take the bells down.
