Housetraining Your New Puppy
No training is more basic for pet owners than that first important lesson: Do it outside!
Teaching your puppy 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 the program, 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 – often as short as two, sometimes a month or more.
As with other learned behaviors, it helps to watch for signs of the daily duty 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 dog to do it when and where you want!
Watch for circling or squatting, then pick up the pup, say ‘outside’ and sprint outside. The puppy may circle some more, but will often squat quickly. Once it starts, say ‘Go potty’ ( or some other unique phrase) in a clear, firm (but not angry) voice. Wait until he has finished and then praise him lavishly.
You won’t always be able to catch the puppy about to begin, but don’t become angry or impatient when the dog has an accident indoors. It takes time for your puppy to learn to tell you it’s time to ‘go outside’. It can take time for the muscles that control the bladder and bowels to develop.
Puppies need to eliminate 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.
Again, even when outside, it helps to wait and watch for the desired behavior then issue the proper 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 catch the pre-elimination behavior in less time, go outside again immediately.
Dogs have an amazing 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 your dog’s nose in the accident.
Paper and/or crate training is preferred by some. A pup can be trained to go on a newspaper, or on one of the chemically treated doggie 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 rarely go in a perfumed litter box. Newspapers will often leave an unpleasant smell in the house.
Also, long before the odor becomes noticeable to humans, dogs can smell their own distinctive aroma. Dogs don’t find the odor unattractive – quite the opposite. And that’s the problem.
Dogs that are paper trained sometimes will prefer to potty indoors. Every now and then, they will miss the paper by only an inch, creating a mess to clean up.
Once the scent is in the carpet, the dog will often seek that area 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.
Lots of patience, praise and consistency are the keys to any dog training. Elimination training is the first challenge for you and your dog.
Get more tips and advice on housetraining or dog training at Luvurdog.com/dogtraining
Tagged with: crate training • dog • dog training • dogs • house breaking • house training • potty training • puppies
Filed under: Articles on Dogs
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