Trick or (go Find a) Treat in Your Safe Space!

A harvest moon settles in the sky shining brightly through the hazy clouds. The house is warm and toasty with the smell of chili wafting through the kitchen. A candy bowl perches proudly on the hall table waiting to be emptied.  A deep wind blows– Fido pulls his ears back. A shadow creeps past the window– Fido lifts his head. The crunch of tiny feet on leaves– Fido sits up tall and begins to pant, his ear high and attentive. The footsteps get closer to your front door and Fido closes his mouth to halt all inefficient movement beside the twitch of his curious nose. The footsteps stop. . . he lowers his head. The whispers echo. . . he slowly inches forward.  The door bell rings. . . “TRICK OR TREAT!!!” (and Fido bumbly runs to the door knocking over the candy bowl and you to greet the visitors who are surely only here to see him and not get their loot).

Sound familiar? 

Whether it’s Lock, Shock, and Barrel, the UPS person, a solicitor, or just a family member that wasn’t thinking, these people ringing the doorbell can put your pup into a spiral of exuberance/fear and it can be hard to reign them back into their thinking brains. My suggestion is to give them something TO do when they hear the doorbell to provide comfort, predictability, management, and a new learning history. Let’s teach them that:

DOORBELL = GO TO SAFE SPACE!

If your dog already has a cue to go to their safe space, now might be the perfect time to experiment with this new doorbell cue (if they don’t have a cue yet, why not try it with this!). This is known as a cue transfer, and the order it’s taught is:

New cue > old cue > [behavior] > reinforcement

You may have already done this accidentally with other things.  Maybe you taught sit with just a lure, which became the hand signal, and then you added a verbal cue.

“Sit” [new cue] > hand signal [old cue] > butt contacts floor > treat

After enough consistency, you might be able to say “sit” and the pup would put 2+2 together and put his butt on the ground before you even do the hand signal. Cue transfers like this happen all the time even without our conscious effort, but knowing how to do it intentionally is a super helpful tool.

That means that for this cue transfer we’ll do:

Doorbell [new cue] > “go to place” [old cue] > goes to place > treat (or other reinforcement)

Let’s put it together, people! Here’s the steps I would use in a 3-5 min training exercise (modifying as necessary):

1. Get a bunch of yummy treats and one long term calming project.
2. Practice “go to your place” for a few reps to create some behavioral momentum. If you haven’t taught this yet, start close to their safe space, lure them on the target, mark, reward.
3. Either using an audio doorbell sound or your brother (to give him something useful to do) staged outside, sound the doorbell, give the old cue, and wait for behavior to reinforce.
4. Once you’ve all done it with at least 80% accuracy, you can try to wait a little longer in between the sound of the doorbell and the old cue to see if he offers the behavior you want to see, in this case, going to his place. This is how you phase out the old cue!
5. When you’re finished with your last rep, reward the pup with a long term calming project to transition him to relaxation.

It sounds pretty simple right? It can be! But it also can be less straightforward than you’d expect.  If you’re hitting some speed bumps, consider the following:

• Does your body position to his safe space affect his behavior?
• Do you really say “go to your place” or is the cue actually leading him there (doesn’t matter if it is, you’ll just need to start with the cue that he knows)?
• Is there already a strong/over excited/aversive learning history with the doorbell that needs to be addressed before using it in a training exercise?
• Is his safe space a space he actually chooses to go to?
• Is his safe space too far/too close to the door?

…and probably a million more things that could be affecting clean training. Once you get this down, it’s time for proofing the behavior to the impending distractions that come after the “going to placing” (read more about proofing here).

With that being said, I love having the doorbell be a cue to do something that is incompatible with what we don’t want him to do (rush the door) as a practiced tool in our toolbelt. I also love that for the fearful kiddos it could also become a flight cue to his safe space if people coming over makes him uncomfortable. 

For Halloween, it’s super helpful to get the pup safely to a place that helps everyone be successful (pro tip: also add a physical barrier because Halloween is a TOUGH night for these kiddos who just don’t understand why Spidermen keep coming to their door making their parents squeal). 

Trick or Treat (and treat and treat and treat and treat)!

Now What?

Think about what Halloween (or similar holiday/gathering if this isn’t a practice where you live) looks like in your household. Consider what gaps you’d like to work on before the event happens to help everyone feel prepared. It might mean training, it might mean management, it might mean something else totally different!

Happy Training! 

Corinne