using a bell to potty
 

Hi everyone
I need some more advice. I have trained Bella to potty outside. She will go to the door, then look at me and run back to the door. The only problem is I have to be in the same room with her to let her out. She will not come and get me in another room. She will just do it in front of the door. I thought if I put something on the door knob she could ring, then I would hear her . I zipped tied a set of small wind chimes on the doorknob today. When she runs to the door. I pick her up, hit the wind chimes with her paw, say lets go potty and go outside. Is this the proper way to teach them this command. I have seen where some people are using this method with a bell. I didn't have a bell so that is why I used the chimes.Any idea how long it takes for them to learn this. Thanks for your help

Training

Check out this website: There's lots of info on bell training and you can even buy some door "bells". I made my own before and worked well with my cockers.

Goodluck

It took my Lulu several weeks to learn to ring the bells herself to be let outside. She's not 100% accident free, though. She likes to ring the bells just to be let outside to play & chase bugs. :D We are still working on the potty training part.

good luck. my dog is 2 yrs old and still doesn't ring the bell. we've been trying for 1 1/2 yrs. lol

Terrified of the bell
 

We tried the bell. My boy was afraid of it. Had to hide the bell to get him to go to the door. He just prefers to use mental telepathy with us. It usually works.

Cooper learned to ring the bell within days.....he was pretty much potty trained when we added the bell. Same thing here, the door he goes to is out of sight so we had to come with a way to tell us he was at the door and it works great. Only bad part is he thinks the bell is his "anything I want bell"....dinner, I want to go play outside.....he hits it way harder when he means business for " I have to go NOW" :)

The bells are still hanging by the door but Ziva never used them, I tried for months but she just looked at me ringing them.... She has learned to "rumble" when she needs the door opened.Now the 10 year old wheaten imitates her!

I gave up with the bells. When I started to train her with this she would go to the door and ask to go out. When I started to ring the bells, she was afraid and wouldn't go to the door at all and started to potty on the floor again. When I took the bells down, she went back to asking to go outside. The bells are gone for now, I will just have to keep an eye on her. She has gone 2 days now with no mistakes. YEAH Bella!!!!!!:)

i trained Morgan to use the bells. here is what i did: When taking her outside i'd always go through the door where the bells hung. I would not pick her up, but let her walk on her own and follow me. I'd say "outside" and tap the bottom bell with my finger just enough to get it to make a slight noise at first. the loud noise scared her too. I did this for a few days then started to hit it harder to get her used to the louder sound. I noticed that she would walk to the door with me and then wait for me to hit the bell instead of her trying to ring it. So i started picking up one of her feet and tapping the bell with it when saying "outside" instead of me just hitting it. We did this for a while but she still wouldn't hit the bell on her own. So out came the treats.

i continued hitting the bell myself when going outside but also started treat-bell training sessions for a few minutes a couple times a day. We sat by the bell and i held the treat near it and got her to go to the treat to get it. i held the treat closer and closer to the bell until she'd have to hit/bump into the bell in order to get the treat. when i moved the treat toward the bell i'd say "outside" and every time the bell rang i'd say "yes!" and give the treat. Then i backed the treat away from the bell a little so she's actually have to hit it on her own to get the treat instead of "accidentally" bumping it. If she hit it, i'd say "yes!" and give the treat. if she just jumped for the treat or move towards the bell but not hit it i'd say "uh oh" and move the treat behind my back. I wait a few seconds and try again. We got to the point where i'd just point to the bell and say outside and she'd hit it on her own.

Once i got her hitting it on her own we started the real training back up again. We'd walk to the door, i'd point to the bell say "outside" and she's hit it. She got a treat and I opened the door for her to go potty outside. I slowly phased out the treat for hitting the bell and her reward was my opening the door to go outside. Eventually she just figured out on her own that when she wanted to go out to potty she had to hit the bell for me to get up and open the door to take her out.

Of course when she figured bell = outside we had a few "false" potty rings cause she just wanted to go outside to play :rolleyes:. but that was ok, as long as she pottied out there too and rang the bell. :)

Kalina82 how old was your baby when you were doing this.

i think we started when she was around 5 months old. That was 4 years ago and i still have the bells on the door.

I use a Gotta Go Door Bell Trainer. Its cute, hangs on the door and my dogs picked up what to do pretty easily. I would give them a treat when they pulled on the dogs legs and then I would open the door and say go potty. Took about a week.

I started using the bells a few weeks after Lulu came home, so she was around 4 months old. As I stated before, it took her a few weeks to learn learn to ring them herself & we are still working on her ringing them every time she needs to go potty. She gets better each week! The most annoying thing about them is she will ring them just to be let outside to play. :D But I take her out each & every time anyway.

Good luck with it! :aimeeyork

hahaha! yeah morgan did that too for a while. We'd go outside to potty and then 20 minutes later she was ringing the bell again. i knew she couldn't possibly have to go again but i'd take her out anyway. as soon as she hit the grass she was on her back rolling around. :rolleyes: little stinker just wanted to play outside

LOL! Sounds like Lulu. She rang the bells once when we knew she shouldn't have to potty b/c she was literally outside pottying 5 mins earlier. Apparently, she had forgotten her stick outside! She ran straight to the stick, picked it up & then ran back to the door to go back in! DH got a kick out of it.