House Training A Puppy

Bringing home a new puppy is such an exciting experience.  Well for you anyway.  The puppy may be a little stressed at first, but will calm down once he becomes familiar with his surroundings.  But once that happens, watching them play, and playing with them is very entertaining for both you and your new puppy.

Even though he is just a baby, you need to start thinking about training him.  Training to start right away as well as training for as he gets a little older.  Most of his training doesn't start until he is 4-6 months old, but there is one kind of training that needs to get started right away.

The first thing that you need to train your puppy is where to go to relieve herself.  For this you can have a designated spot outside in the yard, or you can have a specific spot inside the house that you want him to go.  Depending on what type of dog you have, and where you live will have an effect on which method you choose to use.  There is no right or wrong place, so it is strictly a personal choice.

House training for inside the house

Back in the day, we used to use newspaper to train our dogs to go in a specific area in the house to do their business.  Cleaning up wet newspaper is not very sanitizing, and the smell is even worse.  Now you can go to your pet store, and get puppy training pads.  They are square sheets that have a plastic bottom and a cotton top.  These pads have a slight scent to them that the dog can smell.  Scents that will make them want to go there.

When choosing an area of the house to use as your puppy's "relieving" spot, you should look for something that is small.  If you don't have a small place for her to go, you can section of an area.  Once you have the place, cover the area in the training pads, that way, no matter where in the area your puppy decides to relieve herself, she will always be on a pad.  Once she has finished, praise her right away.  It is also a good idea to clean out the dirty pads, and put in fresh ones right away.

After a while, you will notice that she will start to favor a specific area and you will be able to reduce the amount of pads that you need to put in the designated area.  Once you do this, make sure that you keep an eye on her to make sure that she continues to go on the pads.  If she doesn't then you can catch her in the act, scold her (do not hit or rub her nose in it) and direct her back to where she needs to be going.  If she continues to go where there a no pads, that just means that you may have reduced her area by too much and you just need to go back a step for a while.

My mom has a small dog (bichon/poodle) and decided that it might be a neat idea for her dog to have some privacy while he was doing his business.  So she came up with the idea to turn a plastic crate into something similar to a cat's litter box, but without the kitty litter.  The plastic crate was put inside the designated area, and puppy pads were placed inside the crate as well.  I didn't think that he would use it at first, but as it turned out, I was wrong.  He used his little potty crate up until he was big enough to go outside.

Training your puppy to go outside

When it comes to training your puppy to go outside to relieve himself, the steps aren't much different.  At first you should go with him to make sure that he does what he needs to do, in the place designed for him to do it.  You can have this special place set in the back yard somewhere, generally away from high traffic areas or where children play, either a gravel area, a dog run, or a grassy place.  It is really up to you, but you should still have a designated spot where he can do his business.  Once he has done his business, praise him for it right away.  If he stays from his designated spot to relieve himself elsewhere, re-direct him back to where he needs to be.

Once you feel confident that he is going to go to his special place every time, you can start letting him go out on his own.  As he gets older, he will need a way of letting you know that he needs to go outside.  There are a few ways that you can go about this and again this is a personal choice for what ever method works best for you and your dog.

You can teach your dog to scratch at the door when he wants to go outside.  It is an easy way to let you know what he wants, and he can do the same thing to let you know that he wants to come back in.  However, in some cases, this is not always the best method, as I myself have learned.  I taught my dog to scratch at the back patio door when she wanted to go outside.  This worked out great for me at first.  Then I noticed how the frame, the glass (yes there are scratches on the pane of glass on the outside of the door), and other parts of the door are all badly scratched up.  My dog is 70 lbs. so a smaller breed of dog, may not create the same kind of problem.

You can also train your dog to ring a bell.  Tie a string to a bell and tie it by the door where you dog uses to go outside.  Make sure that you have the correct length so the bell is at the same height as your puppy's nose so when he needs to go outside, he can touch his nose to the bell.  When it rings, you know your puppy needs to go outside.  As he grows, you can adjust the height.

Another method is to teach your dog to let out a little bark when he wants out.  This one is a little more difficult since you have to somehow show your puppy that he needs to bark before you will open the door.  In the meantime, your puppy will probably have relieved himself right there at the door. However, if you are standing by the door, and your dog happens to let out a bark, then you can immediately open the door, and praise him when he goes outside.  This way, he can relate the praise and the door opening with his bark.

One thing to keep in mind while house training your puppy is that you should be watching him at all times.  If he does something wrong, then you can catch him in the act.  If you don't catch him in the act, you can't scold him for it after the fact because he won't know what it is he has done wrong.  Rubbing his nose in it is also not a way to let him know that he has done wrong.  As far as he's concerned, there is a mess on the floor and he gets to have his nose rubbed in it.  He has no idea it is because he made the mess, just that there is one and he is in trouble.

Just like a baby when they start crawling, puppies can get into mischief.  So when you can not be watching him or her, it is a good idea to have a safe place where they can not get in trouble.  For this you can use a crate, or even a little corral.  You want to keep him in a place where he normally sleeps since puppies generally will not "go" where they sleep.

You may be asking, "How do I know when it is time to take my puppy to his special place?" Well I have found with my puppy that it was a good idea to take her out within a 1/2 hour from when she ate or when she took a drink of water.  Another way to know when she has to go is to pay attention to her behavior right before she relieves herself.  If she starts whining or sniffing the floor, that could be a good indication that she needs to go to her designated area.

House training takes time, patience, consistency, and understanding.  Accidents will happen during this process; how you handle them are the key.  If you handle the situation incorrectly, you could be damaging this training process.  Remember to try and catch them in the act, say in a firm tone, "No, No, No" and redirect them to where you want them to go.

In no time, you'll see that your puppy no longer needs you to watch her to make sure that you get her to her spot in time because she will just go there on her own.  You should praise her for this so she will continue to do this for you.  Once you have gotten past this tiny little obstacle, you can start planning ahead on how you would like to conquer the next.  Obedience.