Door dashing and escaping

Teaching your dog that an open door isn’t a cue to bolt for freedom is something many dog owners struggle with. Having a reliable ‘wait’ and ‘release’ cue before going through any doorways, crossing the road, jumping out of the car, and many other scenarios, is critical for your dog’s safety. Building an association between open doors and waiting to be invited to go through is one way to ensure that your dogs will learn that open doors aren’t an invitation to bolt through them.

For those of you with dogs that are escape artists or door dashers, there may be a number of reasons why this is occurring.

Is your dog getting to go out and explore regularly?

For those dogs that are confined to back yards and rarely get out, making a bolt for it at any opportunity will be something that will be very rewarding to them. Your dogs should be ideally getting out twice per day for exercise, sniffing, and just all round stimulation. It is also critical that your dog gets plenty of physical and mental exercise so that when you’re not home, they are not looking for undesirable ways to entertain themselves. When they are left home alone it is also important that their environment is as enriched as possible. There is such a variety of interesting and engaging dog toys on the market that are tailored to suit all sizes and energy levels of dogs.

You can even have just a few toys that you rotate between, so your dog thinks they are getting a new toy when it makes a reappearance. There are a lot of great treat balls on the market too where you can hide their food in and they have to work out how to get the food out. This is a great way to make meal time a longer and more interesting exercise that is also mentally stimulating and prevent them finding alternate ways to amuse themselves such as through destructive behaviours or looking for ways to escape while you’re not home.

Does your dog associate coming back to you as a pleasant experience or is it one that is associated with losing freedom or even being told off?

Many of us only call our dogs back to us when we want to leave a fun environment such as a dog park where they’ve been having a blast playing and exploring, or while they are loose after dashing off in an uncontrolled environment and we are panicking! These are not teaching scenarios, these are situations we want to train FOR, not train IN. In these situations, I often hear owners yelling at their dogs in harsh tones to return to them immediately, and their dog is understandably frightened to come back. Once they finally do return, their dogs might be reprimanded for finally returning to them! 100% of the time when your dog returns to you, it is important that it is made a positive experience and that their return is rewarded – irrespective of how long it took. If it was a challenge to get your dog to return, training your dog to come when called needs to become a part of your regular training regime. This teaching of a recall needs to start around the house, then moved to other environments with a few small distractions. Click here for tips on how to teach a reliable recall.

Has your dog learned to focus on you around distractions?

Teaching our dogs to focus on us and to do this in the presence of increasingly distracting environments will teach our dogs that even though a lot is going on around them, focussing on you is more rewarding. You can also help with making focus more reliable through teaching a “watch” command, through luring food toward your eyes, and rewarding your dog the instant they make eye contact. Gradually increase the distraction level you are teaching them to do this in to teach focus in increasingly distracting environments.

Has your dog learned impulse control and that access to rewards, including environmental rewards, is reliant upon working for you?

If your dog has learnt to access rewards of their own volition and that we aren’t in any control of whether they can access them or not, and whether they need to work for them or not, they will choose to take off and enjoy them on their own terms. It is important your dog learns that if they listen to your commands and wait for a cue that they are free to go then they will get to earn access to the things they want. If your dog isn’t responsive to your commands and to waiting to be released to go and play, your dog will be very unlikely to focus on you and wait for the ok!

Management is important

If you are working on building up the previous points and you have a dog that is a door dasher or escape artist, it is important to make sure that you manage the environment at any times you aren’t able to control it or supervise closely. It is important to make sure that waiting to be invited to go through a door becomes the norm, and to do this, it has be become a rewarding experience. There also has to be no advantage to dashing through. If your dog waits to be invited, reward them! We want our dogs to know that this is a more
rewarding experience than bolting off.

But how do you teach your dog to wait before going through a doorway?

Teach a wait command first. Wait is a command we would use in situations such as wait at a door until invited to go through, waiting at a road side before crossing, waiting in the car until we have checked traffic and released them to jump out, or even waiting for their dinner before releasing them to eat it, and so forth.

To begin teaching the wait, ask your dog to sit (as they are less likely to break while they are sitting rather than standing), ask your dog to wait (initially don’t make any movement yourself yet while you are teaching this and keep it very short – just 1-2 seconds if you have a jumpy dog), then release your dog with your release cue (such as ‘ok’ or ‘free’), and reward your dog. Gradually build up to increasing durations they have to wait for.

When practicing your sit and wait near a door, get them used to the door opening and closing while they are still waiting in a sit position. Start with them in a sit, ask your dog to wait, and very slowly open the door while they are not breaking position.

If your dog goes to break the sit, close the door again. We need to do this slowly so that the fast movement doesn’t encourage our dog to break, and so that when closing the door again we aren’t closing the door on them and risking any injury. Doing this gradually means you are slowly testing whether your dog will break and can show your dog that moving before being invited makes the door close again and they don’t get to go through.

If your dog gets excited simply with the lead going on, wait until they are calm and sitting before putting the lead on. If they are jumping all over you and the door, put the lead away and take them outside and throw a ball or toy for a bit to get rid of some of their excess energy and try again once they are more settled. This also has the added bonus of them learning that being calm and focused while on lead is what gets them rewarded by going outside for their walk.

If your dog gets excited at the sound of guests knocking on the door or ringing doorbells, teach your dog to sit and wait on a mat while people arrive. Place the mat quite a distance from the door initially, and gradually move the mat closer and closer to the door. You can set up training scenarios with a second person knocking very quietly initially, and work up to louder knocks once your dog is more reliable and waiting calmly on their mat until being released to say hello. This will teach your dog too that even though the door opens and closes, it isn’t an invitation to run toward it or more importantly, run through it. It will also teach your dogs to be calm while visitors come over!

N.B. These are just a few of the tools that you could use if these situations are an issue for you and your dog. If you are concerned about your dog’s behaviour, I always advocate for seeking the advice of a qualified dog trainer to get advice on your dog’s specific situation