Housebreaking Your New Puppy
No training is more basic for pet owners than that first important lesson: Do it outside!
Teaching your pet to potty outside the home, not in it, usually starts between six and eight weeks of age. Dogs as young as four weeks have been started on housebreaking, but at that age few have the muscular control to succeed.
With any dog training program, trainer patience is just as important as the dog’s temperament. ‘Sit’, ‘stay’ and other behaviors can often be learned in a few days. House training typically takes weeks – sometimes as short as two, often a month or more.
As with other learned behaviors, it helps to watch for signs of the desired actions and enforce and direct them with a voice command followed by praise. In this case that technique works even more to the trainer’s advantage, since all dogs will naturally eliminate. The trick is to get your puppy to do it when and where you want!
Watch for circling or squatting, then pick up the pup, say ‘outside’ and dash outside. Sometimes, the puppy may circle some more, but will often squat immediately. When he starts, say ‘Go potty’ ( or some other unique phrase) in a clear, firm (but not angry) voice. Wait until she is finished and then her praise lavishly.
You won’t always be able to catch the puppy about to begin, but don’t become angry or impatient when the dog potties indoors. It takes some time for your puppy to learn to tell you it’s time to ‘go outside’. It also takes time for the muscles needed to control bladder and bowels to develop control.
Young dogs need to go every 2-3 hours, on average. If you haven’t spotted pre-elimination behavior within that time, take the dog outside anyway. Issue the command ‘Go potty’ and wait. At first, usually, the dog will have no clue what you want.
Especially, even when outside, it helps to wait and watch for the desired behavior then issue the command. That helps the dog associate the command with the behavior. If tyour puppy hasn’t gone after a couple of minutes and a few ‘Go potty’ commands, take it back inside for an hour. Of course, if you spot the pre-elimination behavior in less time, go outside again immediately.
Dogs have a surprising ability to quickly learn what their ‘alpha’ (the leader of the pack) wants. This is almost always accomplished by associating a verbal command with behavior, followed by praise. Punishment is usually counter-productive, and nowhere more so than in waste elimination training. Never rub a dog’s nose in waste.
Paper and/or crate training is preferred by some. A pup can be trained to eliminate on a newspaper, or on one of the chemically treated pads designed for the purpose. Some small breeds that live all day in the apartment may not need to go outside at all.
The technique has a couple of downsides however. Unlike cats, dogs will seldom go in a perfumed litter box. Newspapers (even with the top layer removed after the dog goes) will eventually leave an unpleasant odor in the house.
Also, long before the odor becomes unattractive to humans, dogs can smell their own distinctive aroma. Dogs don’t find the scent unattractive – quite the opposite. So that spot continues to be the problem.
Dogs that are paper trained sometimes will prefer to potty indoors. Sometimes they’ll miss the paper by just an inch, resulting in a smelly mess to clean up.
Once the odor is in the carpet, the dog will continue to seek that spot out as its proper ‘place to go’. This makes training the dog to eliminate outside even more difficult. Best to suffer a few accidents than to create a hard-to-overcome habit.
Providing patience, praise and consistency are key factors to any dog training. Elimination training is the first order of business for you and your dog.
Get more tips and advice on housetraining or dog training at Luvurdog.com/dogtraining
