Is Your Dog Potty Trained Enough?
August 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
House Training a puppy or adult Dog is such an essential issue for its owner that even a single exclusive tip turns out to be extremely helpful.
The first step in making your Dog fit for polite company would be to potty train him. Some see this training as a hassle and some as a challenge.
For me, it is part of bringing up a pet.
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Are You Sick & Tired of Do you wish that there was a simple way of house training a puppy quickly and easily? Presenting a Free Course on Potty Training Puppies |
There are a few things you need to know before you actually start potty training a puppy or adult Dog. I enumerate these below:
- You need to understand your dog’s body language. Watch for signs that will indicate to you when your pet wants to eliminate.
- If you own puppies, remember that they need to go potty at fairly frequent intervals – as soon as they wake up, after short naps, after play-time, after meals, before and after being crated and finally, before retiring for the night.
- Take your Dog for walks at the time that he usually does his potty. Take him out to the yard and then to the same place there every time he needs to answer nature’s call.
- Praise your Dog after he eliminates at the right place. Some Dog owners even give treats to their dogs. But remember to do this every time he does it right. He will relate the rewards to his having “done it right” and zero in on the spot where you want him to defecate regularly.
- With time, you can try signal training. This is so that you know when your doggie wants to go. You can hang a bell at his level near the door and teach him to push it with his nose or pat it with his paw on his way out.
- Until your Dog has been fully potty trained keep him under strict vigilance. Do not let him roam around the house freely.
- Use a crate. A crate-trained Dog is usually very happy to get his own den. The advantage of crating is that dogs do not soil the place where they sleep. So, he will naturally not eliminate inside the crate.
- If you have a small dog and if you live in a high-rise building or in a place that does not have a proper backyard, you can try litter pan training. What you do is create a space for your pet to eliminate in your house itself.
- Use positive reinforcements while housebreaking puppies or adult dogs. Do not scold or hit him as you will gain nothing by doing that. He will only associate punishment with your return from outside. If you catch him in the act, a stern ‘NO’ or ‘FREEZE’ will do. It will startle the Dog enough for him to stop pooping.
- Be prepared to return to a soiled home if you are keeping your Dog home alone for more than 4 hours as separation anxiety is quite common among home – alone dogs.
- Accidents will happen. It is unusual for a trained adult Dog to work against its house training. But medical problems or health disorders may lead to sudden accidents.
- Many dogs mark their territory. These can be a leg of a table or a particular wall. Intact male and female dogs mark their territories by urinating. Use deodorizers to spray on the places where your Dog has marked.
- If you are patient and are ready to accept that house training a dog takes time, even months sometimes, you will end up having a good housetrained Dog.
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Are You Sick & Tired of Do you wish that there was a simple way of house training a puppy quickly and easily? Presenting a Free Course on Potty Training Puppies |
Now we will move on to how to potty train puppies and adult dogs.
Potty Training A Puppy:
Irrespective of breeds, housetraining a puppy is considered to be one of the biggest challenges by dog owners. If you think housetraining your puppy simply involves a steady supply of old newspapers, then think again.
A puppy does not develop full control over his bladder until it is over 4 or 5 months old. Since they are growing and developing rapidly at this time, puppies eat more, burn more calories and need to eliminate more frequently than an adult Dog.
After each nap, meal, drink or play, take your puppy to his designated area (indoors or outdoors, wherever you have decided) and stay there until it eliminates. Then bring him to his crate.
Repeat this situation everyday until he has developed a habit out of it.
Click here to subscribe to a FREE course on housebreaking a puppy.
Potty Training An Adult Dog:
The best way to housetrain an adult Dog is to begin all over again.
Observe him very closely. Maybe even maintain a diary of where he goes and when. Whether he is pooping when you are home or only when you are outside; whether you can time yourself to be home when he feels the need to go outside.
You can try dog crates, but be careful to introduce him gradually to them.
Click here to subscribe to a FREE course on potty training a dog.
Remember, commitment, consistency and intelligent use of positive reinforcement will make you the owner of a perfectly housetrained Dog. Don’t expect miracles. You will only be disappointed.
Get this FREE course on potty training a dog.
Get this unique Housetraining guide and start Housebreaking Your Dog Today.
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Are You Sick & Tired of Do you wish that there was a simple way of house training a puppy quickly and easily? Presenting a Free Course on Potty Training Puppies |
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Paper training your dog
August 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Paper training your dog: How to paper train your puppy, or your dog, and other common problems
What is paper training? Paper training is a specific form of house training for your dog: you’re teaching her where in the house is appropriate for her to eliminate (pee or poop). When you paper train your dog, you teach her to only eliminate on newspapers (chosen for their absorbency, readily available, and cheap cost) which you gather up and throw away after each use.
What options other than paper training do I have for my dog’s house training? There are two ways of effectively, efficiently, and rapidly house training your dog. Paper training is one; the other is something called crate training.
Crate training is based on a dog’s basic dislike of soiling where she sleeps, and involves restricting the dog’s movement (by putting her in a crate, or small indoor kennel) whenever she cannot be actively supervised.
The difference between crate training and house training.
Paper training and crate training aren’t the same thing. Crate training is where you train your dog to only go outside; paper training is where you train your dog to only go on newspapers.
You cannot train your dog to do both at the same time – the two are mutually exclusive. She’ll get confused, and you’ll only prolong the training process.
You can choose to use paper training as an intermediary step for eventually only eliminating outside (although not everyone recommends this: it’s easier on the dog, and more effective all around, to choose one method and stick with it.)
Why should I choose paper training instead of crate training?
Crate training and paper training are both effective ways to house train your dog. In general, it’s accepted (by most dog trainers and vets) that crate training is the fastest method of house training your dog; but it requires a considerable investment of time and effort, which is not an option for everyone.
Paper training is the best option for you if:
- You don’t have easy access to a yard (for example, you live in a hi-rise apartment block.)
- It’s not easy for you to take your dog outside for other reasons (for example, if you are elderly or ill.)
- You have a full-time job, or other time-consuming commitment which can’t be gotten around (meaning that you’re not able to spend the large amounts of time supervising your dog that crate training requires.)
- You’re planning on training your dog to go outside the house eventually, but not just yet (for example, it’s the dead of winter with four-foot snow drifts outside.)
Crate training is the best option for you if:
- You have a medium to big dog
- You are able to spend a lot of time during your puppy’s first weeks of house training in actively supervising her, and are available during the day to let her out of the crate at two- or three-hour intervals
- You want to train your dog to go outside the house right from the start
Paper training isn’t suitable for all dogs: it really only works for small males and small-to-medium females, since a dog larger than these just produces too much waste for the newspaper (and you!) to handle.
How to paper train your dog:
First, pick a convenient area of the house for your dog to use as the elimination area. Because she’s going to be peeing and pooping in this area, it’s best if you can choose somewhere without carpet: most people choose a corner of the kitchen or laundry (since these rooms usually have tiled or linoleum floors, making hygiene a non-issue.)
Spread newspaper thickly in a corner of this room. At first, you’ll need to make the newspaper area pretty big, since your pup has no idea that she’s meant to go on the paper at all.
To make sure that she’s able to eliminate only on the paper, you’ll either need to restrict her movements to the papered area of the floor (which you can do by erecting barriers to keep her in – if the room you’ve chosen is large or busy, this is probably the most user-friendly option for you), or paper the whole floor (which is a viable option if the paper-room is small and there’s not much thoroughfare.)
At first, your puppy will eliminate pretty much at random on the paper. It’s important for the paper-training process that she only gets to go on the paper – you need her to form a strong association between the feeling of paper under her toes, and relieving herself.
After a week or two, you can begin to shrink the papered area of the floor, allowing her more access to unpapered surfaces (leave the barriers where they are for now so she doesn’t get the chance to eliminate anywhere else.)
Do this gradually, a couple of sheets at a time. If you’ve given her enough time to get used to the paper, she should naturally restrict her elimination areas as the papered area shrinks.
NOTE: If at any time she begins to eliminate off the paper, then increase the size of the papered floor surface to the size it was when she was still eliminating only on the paper, and give her more time to get used to it before beginning to reduce the papered area again.
There’s no need to panic: this doesn’t mean that the paper training isn’t working, it just means you’re moving a bit too fast for your puppy’s capabilities. Most dogs take a couple of months (eight to twelve weeks) to get used to the paper training method. Until she’s reliably going on the papers only, you should restrict her access to the rest of the house unless you’re actively supervising her- which means 100% of your attention is focused on the pup.
In general, a good rule of thumb is that your puppy is confined to the papered area unless she’s sleeping, eating, or being played with/actively supervised.
Things you should do are:
- Praise her effusively whenever you see her eliminating on the paper. Wait ’til she’s done (so you don’t distract her!) and praise her, pet her, and give her a treat.
- If you catch her in the act of eliminating off-paper, this is actually a great opportunity for training development. Interrupt her with a clap, loud verbalization (“Ah-ah-aaaah!”), or slap your open palm loudly on the wall. This will startle her – in most cases, she’ll actually stop mid-toilet and hunch down. Scoop her up immediately and put her on the paper.
- When she finishes, praise her hugely and give her a treat.
- If you come across an accident after the fact (a wet spot or pile on the unpapered floor), you’ve missed your window of opportunity to teach her not to do this. You can’t tell her off in this case, because she won’t understand what she’s done wrong; all you can do is clean it up and supervise her more carefully.
- If this is happening a lot, you’ve given her too much freedom in the house and not enough supervision: restrict her access to the unpapered floor, and step up the supervision.
- Feed her at specific, scheduled times (for example, a meal at 8 am, 1 pm, and 7 pm) to encourage her to develop an “elimination timetable”.
For further information on house training your dog, including a detailed look at paper training and crate training, check out The Ultimate House Training Guide.
It’s the complete dog-house-training guide. The Ultimate House Training Guide and comes highly recommended.
You can visit the The Ultimate House Training Guide site by clicking this picture: