Hi All!
I'm new to the board. I'll be getting a puppy mid-January and am trying to learn all I can before I bring her home. In several posts people have mentioned training a dog to go through a door after you -- 'their leader'. How do you train a puppy or dog to do this?

Martha, Hi, and welcome to the board. You seem to be off to a good start "learning all you can." At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I gave the same advice last week), you should buy a couple of tapes from Ed, if you haven't already. "Your puppy-8 weeks to 8 months," and "Basic dog Obedience." These tapes deal with everything from health issues, to the psycology behind training, to the training itself. I own 6 Leerburg tapes and they are like a good reference manual. In otherwords, I've watched them all a hundred times over and I keep learning from them all the time. They have given me the confidence to deal with issues with dogs that I would have had no clue about before. I have given questionable advice on this board before. The advice I am giving you now is the surest advice I've given, on any board. Good luck with your new pup I know you must be exited.

If you were looking for a more simple reply, and again, I'm not as sure about this as my previous advice, you can put your dog in a down or a sit while you go through the door first. It's not something I worry about with all of my dogs, only the ones I feel have a dominance issue.

Hi Martha!
I also have the puppy tape that Jason is referring to, but just to expand on his advice a bit, here is another tip which will serve several training purposes at once. Since your puppy won't know right away what sits and downs are, and I'm sure you'll also be dealing with housebreaking, it's a good idea to always keep the puppy close by you throughout your daily routine at home. Attach a leash to your waist and go about your business as the puppy dutifully follows you around. This way, when you go through doorways, you can physically hold the puppy back until you have passed through. You can also start imprinting with sits and downs as you do this. This also serves as a bonding excercise between the two of you, and allows a jumpstart to housebreaking. I never let my puppies have free reign of the house until they are completely housebroken. They are either attached to my waist or crated, with a few supervised play sessions throughout the day. I know it's a little more than you asked for, but I hope this helps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Martha,

I teach the dog a "wait" command. The dog requires permission to go through a door. This goes for the front dor of the house or the car. This also helps keep the dog from going outside when you are bringing things in the house with your hands full. It is not necessary for the dog to sit, it just can't go out without permission. I sart this with puppies and every time we go out the door we tell them to wait and correct for going out the door with out a command to go out. Usually they have this down in a few weeks. It needs to be done inconjunction with obedience training, and they will test it as they mature.

The wait command is also what I use. It started with me training my dogs to sit/stay before the door opened to go outside. This was non-negotiable. This was the foundation to showing the dogs that they will wait patiently for me to either go first or tell them to go. Now all I have to do is stop for a split second at a doorway and they "wait". This is not hard at all to teach.

I would like to add that I do agree with Ricahard that it is not necessary to make the dogs "sit" in order to learn how to wait. This is just something that I did at the time and it worked very well.

Thank-you all so much for your advice and ideas -- I'm eager to give them a try. Also, I think I'll ask for those training videos for Christmas. Hope you don't mind if I ask another question -- see next post.

I suggest basic obedience, this is the foundation for everything. Most of all praise everything the dog/puppy does correct, I believe you can never over praise. Leerburg Videos and the web site has help me with my new police K9. Good luck

EAP

Good point except that it is definately possible to over-praise your dog. There is a proper level of praise and it is explained on Ed's basic dog obedience tape. I believe Ed refers to over-praising as "praising to the level of distraction."