Ring The Bell Dog Training - Part One

Want to train your dog to ring the bell to go outside to potty? With clicker training your dog, it’s easy! If you have already trained the sit, the mat, and the lie down, you are already steps ahead when it comes to training your dog to ring the bell to go out and go potty.

With your clicker charged, and a treat in one hand and the clicker in the other, and your dog ready and willing to learn and watching you with full attention, it’s time to get your dog to ring the bell!  We are going to teach this in a few different segments because it can take a while for your dog to understand. And clicker training is done in stages that are slowly built upon. Yes, kind of like math, but a whole heck of a lot more fun!

Make sure you chose a bell that doesn’t scare your dog. Some dogs are sensitive to noise and it might take you a while to find the right bell!

Step One:

The first thing we want to get your dog to do is to just look at the bell. Find a bell in your house, or in the local dollar store, or anywhere you can.  It can look like anything as long as it has a string on it that you can eventually hang on the door, and that makes a noise you can hear throughout your house!

Click for a Look!

First of all, bring out the bell and show it to your dog.  You don’t have to put it too closely in his nose. With this type of dog training the dog will probably already know you are going to be training, and he’ll be excited to train!

The bell is probably a new object for your dog.  When you present the bell to him (by pulling it out from behind your back) he will most likely sniff it.  Or even if he just glances at it, click and treat!

You may have to juggle the bell, treat, and clicker now as you’ll have these three items to train with.  Putting the clicker and the treat in the same hand works for most people. If you put the treat and the bell string in one hand, you may be pushing the bell toward your dog’s nose, and you want your dog to reach out to the bell!

If the dog then ignores the bell, put it back behind your back, and count to three, and then present it to him again. If he looks at it or sniffs at it Yay! click and treat. You are well on your way.

Stay tuned for the next post where we will go further with the bell!