Should You Teach Your Dog To Ring A Bell To Be Let Out?

It sounds like a brilliant idea doesn’t it! Instead of having to remember to let your dog out at intervals throughout the day, why not teach them to ring a bell, or press a buzzer to let you know that they need the bathroom?

This can be especially appealing with a new puppy or with a rescue dog that needs to be let out much more often than most other dogs.

photo of a yellow lab and a jack russell terrier waiting by a door to be let out

You can buy bells for dogs that you hang on the back door handle, or fix to the wall near the door, and for some people this is a great success. But (there’s always a but..) here’s the downside.

Some people find this creates a bigger problem than the one they are having to solve. Problems that can arise include:

Crying wolf
Early rising
Learning delays

They may not all apply to your dog, but you need to be aware of them. Let’s look at each of those in turn.

Crying wolf

In this scenario, the dog repeatedly rings the bell throughout the day because they simply like going out and coming back in. And when they do this, they won’t always need to pee or poop. Sometimes they’ll simply go out, sniff around a bit, and come straight back in again

Apart from being annoying, this can lead to the owner sometimes ignoring the dog when it rings the bell because they know that the dog has been out recently. But then failing to realise that the dog hasn’t had a pee (or poop) in over three hours and this time actually needs to go.

Early rising

Another situation that can arise, is that the dog uses the bell earlier and earlier in the morning until they are waking owners up at 4 am.

This can be avoided if your dog sleeps in a crate, but is a very common problem. If your dog is not crated at night and you are not a fan of early starts, it could be a deal breaker for you.

Learning delay

Perhaps the most common problem that arises from using bells is that it can delay the dog’s ability to learn to resist the urge to answer the call of nature and wait until the owner is ready to let them out.

This problem also happens when we close house doors in the fall, after having left them open all summer.

When the back door is always open the dog never has to resist the urge to pee or poop, puppies raised during a summer like this commonly have accidents when the weather changes and the door is closed.

This can feel like a massive step backwards. And even older dogs can be affected if they have not regularly needed to remember to resist the urge to use the bathroom, for an extended period of time.

Sooner or later there will come a time when you are not around to hear the bell, or maybe you’ll be in the bathroom yourself and not able to come rushing when the dog rings it! And if the dog’s ability to wait for a while when their bladder is full is impaired… well we all know where that ends.

Proceed with caution

I’m not saying that teaching a dog to ring a bell to be let out can never work. It can and does work for some dogs in some families.

But for those reasons above, I recommend that you are cautious of teaching your dog to use a device that signals to you, that they are ready to go out. Especially if your dog is a puppy or prone to accidents indoors.

If you do train your dog to ring a bell, it’s a good idea to wait until they are fully house trained and reliable before doing so, to minimize the chance of learning delays, or accidents when you are not around to respond to the bells.

And if you have to remove the bells because the dog is over-using them, or waking you up in the small hours, be aware that you’ll need to be extra vigilant afterwards.

In other words, you’ll need to let your dog out more often than normal, just as you would if you close the back door after a long period of warm weather.

I’ll drop a link below shortly for those that are still keen to try this training, and if you’ve already taught your dog to ring a bell to go out, we’d love to hear how you got on! You can share your experiences in the comments below