[yorkietalkjilly]

Well, Tibbe being a really wild dog & door darter when I got him, I had to weigh which was the greater danger to his life, darting out the door during some interlude when a doggie gate was left open, an emergency where I'm down and strangers are coming/going, or any of the unforeseen circumstances that can happen when you count on physical boundaries of some kind keeping them safe and they don't. Plus, I worried about one a tiny as he is getting out of the backyard somehow for just long enough to run off chasing a squirrel/cat/dog and get hit by a car when I'm not looking vs. leaving his yard while we are out there training and I can tell him to "stop", get his leashes, recall him. If a car turns into the street as I'm training him, I just step on the leash until it's past.

As he gets trained in good impulse control out front amidst all the sights and sounds and smells, I think it has helped him when he found himelf out there alone when he escaped the backyard twice when I'd stepped away. Instead of getting out front alone and off lead, being overcome wit excitement by all the sudden, heretofore unfelt freedom and bolting after everything he saw, he'd had some conditioning in impulse control and learning to stay on his property. Would he stay there forever, certainly not, but he did stay long enough for me to find him there when he did get out front alone. So his training paid off so big for us. He could have run off like my sister's dog did but he stayed put.

So far, the two times he's escaped from the back yard, he's not left his front yard when he was alone, free and able to go anywhere. We have squirrels in both the front and back yards all the time and work around them and he's never chosen to chase them out front. Not saying he won't but if a squirrel or some cat doesn't come along when he's possibly out there alone, at least he's got a chance of staying in the yard from his training until I can get to him. After my sister's dog dying as a direct result of door darting, I wanted to train Tibbe to stay in his boundary as long as possible until I could get to him in case he ever got out front alone for a time. I know he wouldn't stay put forever but my sister's dog didn't stay put at all - she ran right across the street and got run over coming back! So I think he's got a better chance of not going wild and running off immediately with good front yard training than if he had absolutely none.