How To Potty Train A Puppy
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Has your family taken in a young puppy? If you are like most new puppy owners, you are are probably uncertain about how you will potty train your cute little puppy, and worried it may make a mess. It helps to know that dogs do not naturally soil the place where they live - their den. They prefer to do their business somewhere away from it. If your puppy has stayed with its mother for the first 2-3 months, it will have learned these basic tidy habits.
Some dog owners interfere with this natural habit. A dog that is chained up for lengthy periods may not have the option to leave its kennel, which is why a dog should be allowed to run free several times a day to help keep its living quarters clean. To house train a pup kept indoors, the first step is to limit its sleeping quarters to a small area that is the equivalent of its “den”. It will naturally wish to keep that area clean. Some people use a crate for this purpose.
You can take two approaches to your house training from that point: training your pup to hold on until it can obtain relief outside, or teaching it to use a dirt tray inside. Either way, the main aim is to have the puppy relieve itself in an acceptable place, not just anywhere in your home as if it were the great outdoors. Personally I prefer training a dog, especially if it is a larger breed, to go outdoors, but this may not be practical if you live in an apartment situation, have no outdoors kennel or you are very busy or often absent.
If you have a yard, take your puppy outside onto grass as soon as it wakes and 15-20 minutes after it eats. This may happen several times throughout the day. Every 3-4 hours, much as with a baby, is a practical guideline for a young puppy. Leave it much longer and the risk of an accident increases. Reward your puppy with praise when it performs as you want. Your aim is for this to become a routine, and eventually your puppy will let you know when it needs to go outside, even outside the routine times.
It will take several weeks to reach this stage. Accidents will happen, but you must not punish your puppy. A much more effective training method is to reward positive behavior. It is a wise idea to have your puppy live in an area with a hard floor that is easy to clean, such as in your garage or utility room, at this time.
If you can, keep the puppy in a large run outdoors during the day. This way it will be asleep for most of its time in your house, through the night, which will reduce the need for you to act as its “nanny” during this stage. If you have a dog door that gives the puppy access to a secure area outside, train the puppy to go outside after eating. This is much easier for you, and speeds up the rate of learning.
Ideally the “den” or crate where your puppy sleeps should be adjacent to this dog door for the for the first few weeks. It should go without saying that free access to the outside does not mean freedom to roam beyond a safe and secure back yard.
Access to the outside may not be practical for you. A dirt tray inside the house is an alternative. You can obtain absorbent materials to use in your dirt tray, which reduce your concerns about the smell. The tray should initially be located a short distance away from where the puppy sleeps so that it is clearly separate from its “den”.
Take the puppy to the dirt tray when it wakes and after it is fed, and reinforce success with affection, until it gets the idea of how to use it. Be patient. Some trainers advocate an initial paper-training stage to better communicate the idea. This is simply the use of newspaper laid on the floor as a place-to-go as an initial alternative to a dirt tray. A little “starter” urine scent on the paper from last time helps the pup to get the idea.
The advantage of using paper is a broader target-zone, and paper is cheap and easily cleaned away. You gradually narrow down this area over a couple of weeks to just the dirt tray. Once the habit of using the dirt tray is firmly imprinted, you gain some freedom to move it step-by-step further away from the den or sleeping area, perhaps to a utility room or attached garage, where the family spends less time.
Your aim is to give your puppy more access to your home in stages, to get your puppy to treat your whole home as its “den”, which it naturally wants to keep clean. It is smart to delay giving access to any dark or secluded corners too soon in case they prove a temptation before the habit to always use the dirt box is firmly imprinted. Your patience during this time will be rewarded by your puppy respecting your home as you want.
