Tips on Housebreaking Puppies
The first training lesson for pet owners is housebreaking a puppy outdoors. The appropriate age for teaching your pet to eliminate is usually done when the puppy is between six and eight weeks old. Dogs whose ages start from four weeks have been started on the program. However, at that age, only a small number of dogs have developed proper muscular control to make it outside when going potty.
As with almost any dog training program, patience of the trainer is required. Often, dogs can learn to quickly obey commands like ’sit’ and ’stay’ within only a few days. Potty training, however, might take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month or more.
Like other taught behaviors, it is a good idea to look for signs of the intended behavior, then guide the puppy with a voice command and reward it with praise. This technique works to the pet owner’s advantage as all pets have to eliminate waste sooner or later. The idea is to train the puppy to do their business at the appropriate time and place.
If you notice that your puppy is circling or squatting, then pick it up, say ‘outside’ and run outside. The puppy may continue to circle for some time, but mostly it will squat immediately. As it begins, clearly say ‘go potty’ (or any special phrase). Your tone has to be firm but not angry. Then, wait until it’s finished and show your appreciation for what the puppy did.
If you fail to catch the puppy before it begins to go potty, don’t get upset or annoyed. Your dog will need some time to learn the desired behavior, as well as to develop proper control of its bowel and bladder muscles.
Usually, a puppy will need to go once every two or three hours. If you don’t observe any pre-elimination behavior within that period, bring the dog outside, just in case. Tell it to “go potty,” and then be patient.
Often, the dog will have no idea what you’re asking. Wait for the behavior, and then say the command again. That way, the dog will learn to connect the two events. If you have no success after five or ten minutes and repeated commands, bring the dog back inside, but continue to monitor it for signs of needing to go potty.
It’s uncanny how quickly dogs can learn to obey the commands of their alpha, or the leader of their group. These commands are often given verbally, and reinforced with praise. Punishing the dog is often unhelpful, especially when it comes to elimination training. Also, it is counterproductive to physically harm your dog and to put its nose into its own waste.
Paper training is another method that some dog owners use. A dog can be trained to go potty on a newspaper or on highly absorbent housebreaking pads that are treated to attract dogs to use them. A few smaller breeds of dogs that stay at home all day can be potty trained indoors. This is also an option for pet owners who do not have a yard where they can do elimination training for their dogs.
This method, however, has its drawbacks. Dogs, as opposed to cats, seldom want to relieve themselves in a scented litter box. In addition, even if you take off the dirty layer of the newspapers, the area will still develop a highly undesirable odor after a while.
Dogs can also detect these unique odors much sooner than humans, and the problem is that, while humans dislike these odors, dogs actually enjoy their own smell. This poses a problem because dogs who are paper trained indoors will detect their own smell and prefer to keep going potty inside. To add to that, once in a while, they will sometimes miss the paper by a few inches, resulting in a huge mess that requires cleaning.
When the dog picks up its odor, it will associate the smelly area with the place for going potty. This raises the difficulty of training the dog to eliminate outside. Rather than developing such a habit, it is better to suffer a few accidents.
When training a dog, it is not only important to be patient. You also need to be consistent, as well as lavish your dog with praise. Housebreaking a puppy may be challenging, but if you follow the suggestions above, you will soon see results.
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- Jessica Hope R. Butler