Puppy Potty Training Methods

Don't Let Your Puppy Get Used to Making Messes

When it comes to reducing household messes, your puppy can be easier to housetrain than a teenager. That's because a puppy - by nature - can't stand to live in the same area with his messes.

You can use that instinct to housetrain your puppy with minimal distress for both of you. A puppy that comes into your home directly from the breeder has adjustments that you have to consider.

Not only is the puppy in a strange environment, but he's been taken from his mother and siblings. Where there were lots of little barks and playful activity among other puppies, he is now an "only dog" in a home where he must wait for your time and attention.

If your home is filled with children, then the puppy can actually be overwhelmed with attention and not enough time to rest. Be mindful that your little puppy has many adjustments to make in becoming part of your home and family.

If you're crate training your puppy, everyone in the home needs to agree that this job is under the control of one person - or at least kept on a schedule. Otherwise, the whimpering puppy in the crate might be released by a well-meaning child (or another adult) and suddenly, there's a mess on the floor.

Worse still is to wake up in the predawn hours of the morning to take the puppy out for a break, only to have to go looking for the puppy. Someone weakened and put the puppy in the bed. Unfortunately, the puppy needs to potty and the next pillow is as good as anyplace. Lesson learned - at least the lesson for the owners.

You may have to train the family at the same time you are training the puppy. Explain how the dog's instinct is to avoid doing potty business where he sleeps and eats. That's why crate training is a kind of aversion therapy - so that the puppy will want to hold it until he's taken outside for official potty time.

Then make sure that you don't let your puppy spend time in his own mess inside the crate. If you constantly interrupt the housetraining routine, your puppy learns that you're not dependable and he accepts living in mess.

Once that happens, you lose weeks' worth of effort. So take advantage of the puppy's instinct for separating his life functions. Who knows - maybe this will rub off on your teenager!

Housebreaking Versus Housetraining

Housebreaking a puppy starts with the wrong premise - breaking. It's as if you want to make the puppy stop being a puppy and function like a perfect little toy. That's neither fair nor realistic.

A pet owner who wants to establish a positive relationship with the pet is focused on housetraining. This approach shows the puppy how to live comfortably in your environment.

Forget the old school methods that teach you to start paper training and swatting a puppy the first day it's home. Whether you bring home a puppy or an adult dog, you're taking this animal from the environment it knows and going into an environment that's totally foreign to it.

The dog has no idea what room is okay to go in and what room is off limits. A shelter dog or crated puppy is so excited to have space to walk and freedom to roam that your home is a virtual theme park of wonders. Add to that the presence of other pets or children and the excitement is almost too much to contain.

Housetraining takes a lot of your time. You need to work with your dog in every room. If the living room is off limits and you notice him sniffing for a place to potty, then gently pick him up, say "No" firmly without shouting, and then place him on the floor of the kitchen with his newspapers or take him outside.

You may have to do that dozens of times until he gets the message, but it will happen. Make sure you balance the "no-no" spaces with the "yes" spaces.  Once your dog has learned the essential house rules for potty zones, you still have to allow for the unexpected.

A dog, particularly a puppy, who is alone and frightened by a thunderstorm or other loud noises may have a potty accident. Or there may be a medical issue that requires you attention.  Like humans, dogs can get urinary tract infections that make bladder control difficult. 

A sudden change in potty training levels can be a cue that your dog's behavior change is from a physical problem, not defiance. As your dog ages, bladder control will fail just as it does for many aging humans.

Any drastic change in routine can get your dog off his potty-training path to success, too. Visiting relatives, home remodeling or emotional distress are all factors that can cause a dog to be lax in housetraining.

Crate Training Is the Most Common Potty-Training Approach for Pups

Placing a puppy in a crate may sound restrictive and unkind, but when used positively, it can be effective for housetraining. By nature, dogs don't like to potty in the same place that they sleep or eat.

Now you know why the newspaper you put in the kitchen next to the dog bowls isn't as appealing for a potty as your living room carpet.  Crate training only gets the desired response if done when you're at home and supervising the time limits.

Confining a puppy in a crate while you're at work all day defeats the purpose. Unable to hold the urine, the puppy will potty in the crate and lose that natural instinct to separate the potty place from sleeping and eating spots.

By keeping the puppy in the crate for limited time, when you release him, he'll be ready and willing to potty where you say to go. That's when you want to be ready to take the puppy outside or bring him to the location where you have potty paper.

If the puppy soils inside the crate, make sure you clean it up before returning the puppy to the crate. Otherwise, you will set back your housetraining efforts.  You have to be consistent in the times that you take the puppy out for a potty break. 

With a puppy, don't go longer than an hour and half to two hours at the most so you can reinforce that going to the potty happens in a certain location, not just anywhere. If the dog quickly does his business, reward him enthusiastically with praise.

You may add a food treat - however, it's a good idea to offer different reinforcements for specific activities. Doggy cookies are great, but your affection and approval is by far the reward that your dog wants the most.

Unless you have a fenced yard, you can also use these frequent potty breaks to reinforce walking on the leash. Don't roam aimlessly during potty breaks. Give the dog five minutes to do the job, and then go back inside.

That will teach the dog that casual walks are just for fun, but potty walks are short and purposeful. You'll be glad you taught that lesson when the dog wakes you up at 3 o'clock in the morning in a desperate need to potty when the outside temperature is freezing.

To help you monitor the crate training, keep a log of times your dog spends in the crate and how often you take the dog out. In the beginning, you may need to take the dog out every 45 minutes to an hour for short breaks.

When you find that this is working, extend the time by 15-20 minutes each period. In a few weeks, you'll learn the times of day the dog most commonly needs to potty and how long he can wait between breaks.

Don't punish him for having accidents. Simply revise the training schedule to shorten the time between potty breaks. If your dog fails to potty after several breaks, be smart and restrict his access to a kitchen or bathroom.

You don't want a dog with a full bladder to start active play or get excited. Those distractions often result in accidents. After a successful potty break, you can give full run of the house as an additional reward. This will train the dog to see that after potty, he gets to have fun with the family, which is another reward.

What If You Don't Want to Crate Train?

You might think that crates are great for shipping cargo, but that dogs are living creatures who deserve better than that.  To you, bringing a dog into your home is adding to your family.

It's not a toy to put in the crate while you're busy and take out a few hours when you have time. You believe that's not fair to the dog.  Crate training may be a popular method for housetraining, but you don't have to do this to successfully train your dog. 

As you're training the dog to wait between potty breaks or until you return home, you can isolate him in a smaller area. A bathroom, laundry room or tiled kitchen is a good choice. The room needs to have an easy to clean floor.

Either close the door or add a baby gate. When you're at home, use the baby gate so that you can observe the dog and so that he doesn't feel punished by being away from you. You can also watch for the physical signs that he needs a potty break.

Dogs have their own signature moves - some seem agitated, restless or shake when they need to have a break.  Others sniff in a circle and begin squatting when the time comes.  You still need to follow the same approach for establishing a regular feeding schedule and follow-up with potty breaks.

When you come home to take the dog out to go potty, put the leash on him and head directly outside. Don't let him run around the house celebrating his freedom. In his excitement, he'll leave a puddle on the rug - not because he's mad at you, but because his enthusiasm overcame his bladder control.

Crate training advocates insist that this is the best and fastest way to housetrain a dog. Opponents totally disagree, countering that the difference of a few weeks is nothing compared to having a well-adjusted dog that feels like a member of the family rather than a prisoner of war most of the day.

If your dog is in a small room, he probably has far more space than in a crate. He also has a tall ceiling above him, so he feels free and happy. He can designate a spot in the room for an emergency potty and still have room to get away from it.

Your dog is going to be a member of your family for many years. So what if it takes a little longer to housetrain him?  You may have to use the small room training location for nights until he's old enough or well-trained enough to wait until morning to go potty.

This isn't the time to weaken and put him in your bed. You'll both wake up in a chilly puddle. Give him time to adjust to the training, and then you can welcome him to a soft bed in your room, or surrender the extra pillow if you choose.

Don't Scold! Use Positive Reinforcement Instead

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you start fussing, your puppy hangs his little head and tucks his tail between his legs in despair? He knows you're upset and has no idea what to do about it.

If it's because of his "accident" on the floor, he's really confused. He had to potty and you weren't there to take him out - or you were too busy on the computer to stop and notice his needs.

At some point his bladder couldn't take it anymore and now he has your attention, but in a negative way.  Scolding a puppy (or even an adult dog) that is new to your home for accidents is useless.

All your teaching is that you have a short temper and your love is conditional. You don't show what you want him to do, so nothing is learned. Positive reinforcement focuses on teaching what you want the puppy to do instead of shouting about what you don't want.

With positive reinforcement, the puppy makes the association between what he just did and your praise. Since he desperately wants to please you, he tries to do it again for your approval.

With each reinforcement, the behavior becomes more and more automatic so the housetraining takes hold.  Accidents happen - even to a dog that's housetrained. Upsets in the routine, visitors, home remodeling, and holiday schedules are just a few times that can cause your dog to be confused about what's expected.

When you find an accident, clean it up. Never rub his nose in it or scold him verbally. If your dog seems to go to a certain place, like a lesser-used dining room to potty, then restrict access to that room by closing the door or putting up a child's gate.

If your dog has recently been left at a kennel for days or weeks, you may need to repeat the earlier crate training and provide more frequent potty breaks. Do as you did when he was a puppy and make a chart of these breaks so that you can predict the dog's elimination patterns and intentionally time his breaks closer to them.

Your dog depends on you to give him the potty opportunity when he needs it. Your dog will go when he needs to, so make sure his potty break meets those times.  When accidents look like diarrhea, your dog is having stomach upset not trying to defy you.

Don't punish him for what he can't prevent. Check the dog food. Is it out of date? Have you left dog food out for several hours? That can be a food danger.  Make sure that no one in the family is feeding table scraps or junk food to the dog.

These are not suitable for the dog and can easily lead to stomach upset. Just as with humans, diarrhea or other sudden change in bowel habits can mean that your dog has a medical problem. You'll feel horribly guilty if you scold your dog, only to learn he couldn't control the potty problem.

Cruel House-Training Tactics Are Out

If you bring home a puppy, be prepared to deal with accidents during the potty-training phase. It's shocking the way people use abusive tactics to stop a puppy from doing what comes naturally.

Puppies are no more prepared to be instantly potty trained than human infants are. A period of development needs to be reached before the puppy is ready to follow your requests and commands.

The puppy desperately wants to please you and doesn't understand why he's being punished.  The old views of punishment as a means of potty training are as outdated for dogs as they are for children. It simply doesn't work.

Rubbing a puppy's nose in the feces isn't a good approach. The dog only sees you as a tormentor and doesn't understand what you do want instead.  There is a very real risk of serious illness to the puppy after getting a nose full of E-coli bacteria.  If you're unhappy with the cost of having your rug cleaned, wait until you see the vet bill from an illness you caused!

Another type of fear-based potty training is to swat the dog with a rolled-up newspaper after rubbing his nose in the feces. If the puppy could speak, he would say, "What makes you think I'm going to potty on newspaper in the kitchen after you hit me with it? I don't want anything to do with newspaper!" Hitting a puppy with rolled up newspaper merely teaches him to fear newspaper.

You simply have to accept that a puppy will make mistakes. Sometimes, you're responsible for those mistakes. When you arrive home late or sleep in rather than taking the puppy outside, what you do expect him to do?

Don't punish the puppy because you changed the schedule. If you want to get the puppy accustomed to a morning and afternoon walking regimen, then you have to be consistent. You also have to respond when the puppy shows signs of discomfort, irritation or other means of trying to get your attention.

If he needs to go a lot, be fair. Don't you have days when your potty breaks are more frequent and sudden?  What if you had an intense need to potty but your boss demanded that you sit through an hour-long meeting?

Be careful when training a puppy that you teach positive skills rather than instill fear at how mean you are. Too often the dog owner's frustration simply teaches a puppy to stay away. If a dog becomes mean, chances are he learned it from a mean-spirited owner.

A puppy's world is playful, enthusiastic and adventure-filled. Sometimes chasing down that rubber ball is so intense that he forgets about going to the potty until his little bladder can't wait any longer and there's an accident. It wasn't on purpose, so be careful how you respond. A puppy with a broken spirit learns to watch for an open door to run away and never return.