If you have dogs, do you ever want to murder people who have to include a doorbell ring in shows or ads?

My dog ignores my doorbell, unless I have it set on the duck sounds. My doorbell plays a variety of wildlife calls.

Molly has gone deaf and doesn’t bark anymore. Axel doesn’t seem to care.

I had a dog growing up, and she always freaked out at doorbell sounds in television shows or commercials. She was particularly paranoid, though. What really annoys me are police sirens in radio advertisements and alarm clock noises coming from anything other than my alarm clock. In fact, I don’t even like my own alarm clock that much.

Relevant.

@SavoirFaire I really like that.

I have four dogs.

My four cats would also like to murder the doorbell ad ins.

Two of our dogs (the girls) cannot tolerate the event to go by without loud growls. The growls set off one of the dogs to bark, and then the ruckus begins.

I need to look into that one. We don’t have a doorbell. If someone wants to see me they will have to donate a few dead skin cells to my door. Doing that will get them to barking for sure.

I don’t have this problem, but I’m bothered by a related phenomenon. I would like to see the use of automobile horns outlawed in radio ads. I can’t tell you how many times I have been startled and given an unpleasant adrenalin rush of alarm by the blast of a car horn that turns out to be part of a radio commercial. False danger warnings are dangerous themselves in busy traffic and could cause someone to make a mistake. I know they’ve thrown me off a good many times.

I absolutely agree @Jeruba. I have had exactly the same experience and thought the same thing. It seems dangerous to me too.

@Blueroses, we don’t have a doorbell so my dogs don’t care about TV door bells.

My puppy isn’t fazed by TV doorbells. Real ones? Yeah, she runs to the door and starts barking and jumping around, but she seems to know the difference between a real one and a “fake” one.

So, I guess my answer is no.

My cat isn’t afraid of most things, but when there’s a knock or the door bell rings, either for real or on TV, he races up to the second floor like his tail’s on fire. So do I—emotionally. I hate it when somebody comes to my door after dark. (And why do these people feel they have to pound on the door? Do they think homeowners turn deaf at sundown!)

Our dog goes mental over doorbells… no matter where they come from. She’s a TV watching dog too, so she doesn’t miss a beat. We are trying to train her to be calmer about it. We actually start her reactive dog classes next week! I know how to train her and she’s usually great at home (other than doorbells and playing with the cats). The issue is in public with other dogs, for both my partner and I. We have a hard time correcting her in front of people and get embarrassed easily. So, yeah, we need training (in a class with others) to teach us how to do this. I don’t want Piper, our dog, to end up naughty in public like our previous dog did (completely my fault).

Since I’ve now gone off topic… um to answer your question, yes it does drive us a bit batty when doorbells go off on TV. I don’t want to murder people though. It’s just part of the noise of TV shows.

Oh, and the cats couldn’t care less about the TV. It doesn’t seem to exist to them.

We have a dawg & she can tell the difference between TV & real life, so no barking at the telly, whenever there’s front door activity though…boom, turns into a doggie version of Pavarotti, only not fat, or dead even.

My dog didn’t react to it, because we didn’t have a doorbell at our house. However, Bub was OBSESSED with cows, so every time a cow would show up on TV, he’d go bananas.

Our doorbell doesn’t make the classic ‘ding-dong’ sound, so we were ok until my daughter’s little dog started living here. She reacts to the TV doorbells, setting the other dogs off as well. So our typical scenario goes like this:
TV: Ding-dong!
Little dog: BarkBarkBarkBark!!
Other dogs: (What the- did we miss something?) BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK!!!
Me: IT’S THE TV!! SHUT UP!!!
And of course none of them ever believe me.

Willow goes completely crazy about doorbells. I’ve never been able to condition that out of her.

It was hell over the winter, because we’d be watching television as my uncle would doze off in his chair, then an ad would come on with a doorbell, Willow would be all up in its grill, and uncle would be waking and struggling out of his chair to see what the fuss was about… and answer the door. I had to try to settle everyone down, and by the time she would settle and he would start to doze again… it’s time for another commercial break.

I have never lived in a house with a doorbell since I had my Jack Russell and yet, every time she hears one on TV, she barks!!

I have wanted to murder dogs that bark at doorbells and things that sound like doorbells. Does that count? Bad, poorly trained, stupid dogs.

@cazzie, and how about dogs that go nuts barking at every passerby? Front door’s open, screen door shut, you simply walk past the house on the sidewalk and some cretinous dog behind the screen addresses you with such savage barking that it sounds as if it wanted to chew your legs off. When this happens I simply never hear anyone attempt to shush the dog.

@Jeruba When in a bad mood, I do yell back at the dogs. Cathartic.

@Jeruba There’s a very large dog like that up our street. Every time I walk our dog up there, this giant dog jumps up against the window with very aggressive barking and scratching. I worry he’ll bust through one day. I never see anyone try to calm him. Diagonally, behind us, there are Bichons who constantly yap if they are out on the deck. The owners do nothing. Our dog just sits and stares at them. My other neighbours have yelled at these dogs several times.
If our dog barks in the backyard, I am on her within seconds. Whether it’s a simple “quiet” or me having to go out there to physically calm her. She isn’t an excessive barker, thank goodness. She will bark at unexplained noises (usually human-made like dragging garbage bins) or other hyper bouncy dogs. As for humans going by, she just wags her tail excessively.

We don’t have a doorbell.

I’m breaking a foster dog of doorbell and general visitor/passerby obnoxious behavior.
The technique involves a bottle of bitter apple spray which has to be handy at the time of indecent behavior.

A very stern “NO BARK” that disrupts the noise while I grab his muzzle and give a direct spray into his mouth. I’ve had to act exactly twice.. Now, I give the “NO BARK!” And grab the spray bottle. He shuts up. We’re successfully moving to just keeping the bottle visible and pointing to it. This is a smart and difficult shepherd who thinks barking is his J.O.B.

Now… let’s move on to the new trend in squeaky shoes…
The little dog goes wild for squeaky and always has. It’s his mission to find and rip out squeakers.
Bad trend! Very bad! No Squeak!!

I tried that with lemon juice, per Red Power Lady (long ago.) My dog developed a fondness for lemon juice. Sigh.

@Dutchess_III I have never had a dog develop a taste for Bitter Apple. My really naughty dog, years ago…. my mom only ever bought one bottle of the stuff and she kept it by the door for years. It was empty. She only had to reach toward it and the dog would stop and drop.

Ok…what is bitter apple?