Toilet Training
When you get a new puppy one of the first things on the list is house training your puppy. Before the young puppy can be trusted to have full run of the house, somebody must teach the house rules. Otherwise, your puppy will let her imagination run wild in her quest for occupational therapy to pass the time of day. Each mistake is a potential disaster, since it heralds many more to come. If your puppy is allowed to make “mistakes,” bad habits will quickly become the status quo, making it necessary to break bad habits before teaching good ones.Begin by teaching your puppy good habits, including house training, from the very first day she comes home. Remember, good habits are just as hard to break as bad habits. Most pressing, your puppy’s living quarters need to be designed so that housetraining and chewtoy training are suitable.
Confinement will help you housetrain
Successful domestic doggy education involves teaching your puppy to train herself through confinement. This prevents mistakes and establishes good habits from the outset. When you are physically or mentally absent, confine your puppy to keep her out of mischief and to help her learn how to act appropriately.
The more you confine your puppy to her Doggy Den and Puppy Playroom during her first few weeks at home, the more freedom she will enjoy as an adult dog for the rest of her life. The more closely you adhere to the following puppy-confinement program, the sooner your puppy will be housetrained and chewtoy trained. And, as an added benefit, your puppy will learn to settle down quickly, quietly, calmly, and happily.
Housetraining your puppy when you’re not at home
Keep your puppy confined to a fairly small puppy playroom, such as the kitchen, bathroom, or utility room. You can also use an exercise pen to cordon off a small section of a room. This is your puppy’s long-term confinement area. It should include:
- A comfortable bed
- A bowl of fresh water
- Plenty of hollow chewtoys (stuffed with dog food)
- A doggy toilet in the farthest corner from her bed
Obviously, your puppy will feel the need to bark, chew, and eliminate throughout the course of the day, and so she must be left somewhere she can satisfy her needs without causing any damage or annoyance. Your puppy will most probably eliminate as far as possible from her sleeping quarters-in her doggy toilet. By removing all chewable items from the puppy playpen-with the exception of hollow chewtoys stuffed with kibble-you will make chewing chewtoys your puppy’s favorite habit, a good habit! Long-term confinement allows your puppy to teach herself to use an appropriate dog toilet, to want to chew appropriate chewtoys, and to settle down quietly.
Housetraining your puppy when you’re at home
Enjoy short play and training sessions hourly. If you cannot pay full attention to your puppy’s every single second, play with your pup in his Puppy Playpen, where a suitable toilet and toys are available. Or, for periods of no longer than an hour at a time, confine your puppy to his Doggy Den (short-term close confinement area), such as a portable dog crate. Every hour, release your puppy and quickly take him to his doggy toilet. Your puppy’s short-term confinement area should include a comfortable bed, and plenty of hollow chewtoys (stuffed with dog food).
It is much easier to watch your pup if he is settled down in a single spot. Either you may move the crate so that your puppy is in the same room as you, or you may want to confine your pup to a different room to start preparing him for times when he will be left at home alone.
Train your puppy to housetrain himself
Housetraining and chewtoy-training will be quick and easy if you adhere to the puppy confinement plan above, which prevents the puppy from making mistakes and prompts the puppy to teach herself household etiquette. If you vary from the program, you will likely experience problems.
Preventing housetraining mistakes
Housetraining is quickly and easily accomplished by praising your puppy and offering a food treat when it eliminates in an appropriate toilet area. Once your pup realizes that the equivalent of coins in a food vending machine-that feces and urine may be cashed in for tasty treats-your pup will be clamoring to eliminate in the appropriate spot, because soiling the house does not bring equivalent fringe benefits.
deficating inside is also a timing problem: either the puppy is in the wrong place at the right time (confined indoors with full bladder and bowels), or the puppy is in the right place at the wrong time (outdoors in the yard or on a walk, but with empty bladder and bowels).
Timing is the essence of successful housetraining. efficient and effective housetraining depends upon the owner being able to predict when the puppy needs to eliminate so that it may be directed to an appropriate toilet area and more than adequately rewarded for doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.
Usually, puppies urinate within half a minute of waking up from a nap and usually defecate within a couple of minutes of that. But who has the time to hang around to wait for puppy to wake up and pee and poop? Instead it’s a better plan to wake up the puppy yourself, when you are ready and the time is right.
Short-term confinement offers a convenient means to accurately predict when your puppy needs to relieve herself. Confining a pup to a small area strongly inhibits her from urinating or defecating, since she doesn’t want to soil her sleeping area. Hence, the puppy is highly likely to want to eliminate immediately after being released from confinement. and it will let you know it needs to go at the top of its voice if you are late
Using indoor toilet areas
For the best doggy toilet, equip a litter box or cover a piece of old linoleum with what will be the dog’s eventual toilet material. For example, for rural and suburban pups who will eventually be taught to relieve themselves outside on earth or grass, lay down a roll of turf. For urban puppies who will eventually be taught to eliminate at curbside, lay down a couple of thin concrete tiles. Your puppy will soon develop a very strong natural preference for eliminating on similar outdoor surfaces whenever he can. a oil drip tray from supercheap is a great underlay for toilet surfaces
If you have a backyard dog toilet area, in addition to the indoor playroom toilet, take your pup to his outdoor toilet in the yard whenever you release him from his doggy den. If you live in an apartment and do not have a yard, teach your puppy to use his indoor toilet until it is old enough to venture outdoors at three months of age. or when it has had its 3rd parvo needle
Training you puppy to use an outdoor toilet
For the first few weeks, take your puppy outside on-leash. Hurry to his toilet area and then stand still to allow the puppy to circle (as he would normally do before eliminating). Reward your puppy each time he “goes” in the designated spot. If you have a fenced yard, you may later take your puppy outside off-leash and let him choose where he would like to eliminate.
