Potty Training Your New Puppy

Posted by Puppy Trainer on May 3rd, 2009 filed in Dogs

Housetraining

No training is more basic for pet owners than that first important lesson: Do it outside!

Training your puppy to eliminate 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 housetraining, but at that age few have the muscular control to succeed.

With any dog training plan, trainer patience is as important as the dog’s temperament. ‘Sit’, ’stay’ and other behaviors can often be learned in a few days. ‘Potty’ 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 elimination behavior 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 secret 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. The puppy may circle some more, but will often squat quickly. As it starts, say ‘Go potty’ ( or some other unique phrase) in a clear, firm (but not angry) voice. When the puppy has finished the deed, praise him lavishly.

You won’t always be able to catch the puppy about to eliminate, but don’t become angry or impatient when the dog eliminates indoors. It takes a while for the dog to learn to tell you it’s time to ‘go outside’. It also takes time for the puppie’s muscles needed to control 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 observe 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 spot the pre-elimination behavior in less time, go outside again immediately.

Dogs have a unique 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 puppy’s nose in waste.

Paper and/or crate training is preferred by some. A pup can be trained to potty on a newspaper, or on one of the chemically treated housetraining pads designed for the purpose. Some small breeds that live all day in the home may not need to go outside at all.

The technique has a couple of downsides however. Unlike cats, dogs will rarely eliminate in a perfumed litter box. Elimination on newspapers often leaves lingering odors in your house.

Also, way before the odor becomes unattractive to humans, dogs can detect their own distinctive aroma. Puppies don’t find the smell unattractive - quite the opposite. And that is where the problem lays.

Dogs that are paper trained will often prefer to potty indoors. Occasionally they’ll miss the paper by only an inch, creating a mess to clean up.

Once the smell 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.

Patience, praise and consistency are key factors 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