Tricky T-Day: Ding-a-ling edition

It's Tricky T-day! I mentioned in last week's post that I trained Moose to ring a bell when he wanted to go outside. Before I even had my own dog, I loved the idea of this since it helps you understand what the dog wants. It is one of the few tricks where they give the cue and the human does the trick if you think about it! Once I got Moose home I found that he would scratch at the door to be let out which I really did not want to reinforce any longer and so this 'trick' was a real priority!
The 2 fundamental parts of this trick are to train the dog to ring a bell and to associate the bell with the door opening and the dog being let outside. 
I started by hanging the bell on the door knob and putting a tiny dab of peanut butter on it and when he would lick it it would ring and I would open it... No good! Messy, it was impossible to accurately mark the right behavior and when I opened the door it was a reward but it also moved the bell away which is a negative thing since he was still licking it! I also found that starting with the bell on the door resulted in him getting frustrated and resorting to scratching at the door. Too much collateral damage!
So I took a different approach and taught him to ring the bell on command as a first step. That way when it was time to go out we would go to the door I could cue 'bell' and he would ring it and I immediately opened the door.
Part 1 shows him learning to ring the bell by 'shaping'. I reinforced any interest in the bell. Since he already knows about the bell (though it has been 2 years since he has encountered it not on the door!) most of his actions result in the ringing sound but when I first did it sometimes he would just sniff and I rewarded that too. You can get pickier as the training progresses so that he only gets the reward for making it ring and only when he uses his nose to do it, etc. Once he is reliably nudging the bell I would say the word 'Bell' right as he touched it.


Part 2 shows the progression to hanging the bell and gradually the 'bell' cue is given earlier so that it is said before he is ringing it.


When he got really good at the bell command I could also give it from another room. He would scratch on the door and from my office I would say 'no' wait a few seconds and say 'bell' and he would ring and I would dash in and open the door! It was slow at first but then it seemed like he all of the sudden he got it and it was done! When I look back at old posts it looks like it took us a month or so to learn this one. This was a slower process than other things I have taught because I was essentially trying to un-train one behavior (scratching the door) that had been immediately and consistently reinforced for more than 5 years! Plus we were both new to each other and he had not done much training in his past life. I know he would learn it faster now. That is the awesome part about this kind of training, every trick is easier than the last because you both get better at it!
The other important part that helps with the association is that even when you are not working on it, if the bell is attached to the door it will automatically ring when it is opened and closed which helps them make the link between bell ringing and door opening. I have read that hanging a bell on the door is enough to teach this behavior in some dogs with no effort on your part so this is why it is pretty important that the bell is hanging on the door rather than on the wall next to it where it won't ring unless you remember and no one remembers 100% of the time!
Some of you may recall that TeddyNo learned to ring the bell with no effort on my part. He either put two and two together on his own or was copying Moose, either way, if you have multiple dogs you could probably start with the leader and the rest may get it on their own.
If anyone out there decides to give it a try I would love to hear about it! Honey has also trained her human to open the door when she rings, so she may have a different way if this does not work!
If you wanna share your tricks, stop by Ludo's blog and let them know!