Front door

[Esme's Mommy]

Originally Posted by PZGunstar

I suggest using your dogs intelligence to your advantage. In my experience there are a couple ways to deal with this. I find that sit stay can often take a couple weeks to learn. The fastest method can actully be made into a type of game for the yorkie. Now since the yorkie is a smaller dog and his nose is already practicaly at the floor I recommened sitting or kneeling when doing this. Alright, put your dog on a leash and collar, it's preferable to have a neck collar. Please try to avoid any type of restriant collars as those can be avoided. I ask for a regular neck collar over a halter due to quicker reaction time. Anyway. Have a nice amount of bitesized treats for your dog, make it something special, something they will want to work for.

Now Sit with your dog at the door you want to train him to not cross and give him a treat or two so he knows just how good the stuff in your hand is. Make sure he sees it. Now after his attention is focused on that food toss it across the doorway.
Now make sure your dog has line to make his own choices, more then likely he will walk towards the treat and try to eat it. As he walk toward that treatand approchs the threshold give him a little tug back as hes about to step over and outside, he should start to process this after a couple atempts stop and as soon as he looks at you, give him a treat.
Toss anouther treat across the threashold and repeat this process see if instead of going after that treat he instead will look to you. Do this a couple times until this occurs every time he shows no intrest in the treat across the doorstep and looks to you for approval give him a treat.
eventualy you will be able to throw a treat across and he will look to you to see if it.
This is a good way to condion them to watch you when you are going out, and instead of focusing on the otherside of the door they are focusing on you.

I think the above is a great way to train a dog not to go out the door.

Esme was doing pretty good about not going out the door until one day that she saw my sister standing on the sidewalk and ran out the front door and into the street. Luckily my sister was able to grab her and pin her down (her arms were full so she was unable to pick her up.) I was really scared and upset.

This is what I did for Esme: I put a zepherhills bottle filled with ten pennies by the door and practiced opening the door. When she would try to cross the threshold, I would shake the pennies and she would back up. This worked very quickly. When we open the door, she now stands about 6 feet back, no pennies needed. I hate to shake the pennies at her, but I don't want her to get hurt. It only took one day, and a few practices and Esme learned not to go out the open door.

[Cudda84]

I practiced with him yesterday some. I would not come into the door until he sat down. He does know how to sit. So that makes it easier. Everytime I started to open the storm door if he started towards it I would say `no' and `sit'. When he backed up and sat I would come into the door. Next I will do the treats and the pennies. Any type of negative reinforcement.

[suzysmitt]

PZ Gunstar thanks for that advice. I'll try it.