It is important to plan ahead for house training. Always ensure everyone in the house is involved and that everyone knows what the plan is. It is important to have consistency when training puppies so as not to confuse them. Routine is essential for achieving the desired goal of having a puppy with “good manners”. Puppies, as with human babies, benefit greatly from a fixed routine, they feel safer and it helps the learning process.
Puppies need to be house trained in order to understand what appropriate and inappropriate behavior are. House training is an uncomplicated process that should always be carried out positively (without punishment that scares the puppy) and consistently, following two main guidelines: 1) prevent indoor accidents through confinement and close supervision, and 2) take the puppy outside on a frequent and regular schedule and reward him or her for eliminating where you want him or her to go.
Every puppy will present you with different challenges, but it is important to be patient and to persist. Do not give up. Successful house training depends upon your diligent supervision so you can be there to show your puppy where to eliminate.
The age at which we take puppies home is still at the stage of development when they do not have complete control of their bladder and bowel functions. The older they get the easier it is for them to control and “hold it in”. For this reason the younger your puppy, the longer it may take for house training.
House training may only be complete once a puppy is 6 months or older. Mistakes will happen, but have confidence in your techniques, and you will succeed.
When house training is done correctly it should not be a stressful event but rather a matter of putting a little extra work into getting your new puppy into a routine during the first few weeks after their arrival at your home. Don’t let this natural process take away from any of the joy of a new puppy.
An essential fact to remember with dogs is that they do not have a concept of right or wrong, they will only partake in a behavior if it is beneficial or natural to them. Puppies do not understand that eliminating in the house is bad behavior. A puppy will only do what is natural for them, and it is our responsibility to guide this normal behavior into one that is suitable for us as the owner. All this should be done in a safe and comfortable environment to build a puppy’s confidence, promote their learning and avoid stress or fear. A puppy that is reprimanded for eliminating indoors sometime after the incidence has occurred, will just be confused and scared and unable to correlate the punishment to the “crime”. If you catch your pup in the act, punishing them will result in your little one trying to hide his eliminating from you, making the training all the more difficult.
A bonus when it comes to housebreaking is that a puppy’s digestive system is extremely efficient. This mean that within 5 to 30 minutes after the puppy eats, they’ll want to pass a stool. With this in mind, keeping a regular feeding schedule can go a long way to assisting house training.
In the early days of house training one should ensure that they have a safe area to defecate and urinate. If a puppy feels stressed or scared they are unlikely to do it in an appropriate area. Dogs are largely driven by odours in the environment as well as the substrates (the surface they are standing on) they choose to defecate or urinate on. Bearing this in mind, it is beneficial that you always take your puppy to the same area to eliminate.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that the time between eliminating for puppies correlates with their age in months. Following this, a 2 month old puppy will need to eliminate every 2 hours (possibly a bit less) and by the time they are four months old they can last up to 4 hours. This can vary depending on when last they ate or drank water, any physical activity, and also importantly, personal preference. This also does not take into account sleeping, and luckily puppies sleep a lot.
The breed of your dog can have an impact on house training. Larger breeds tend to be easier to house train than small or toy breeds, simply because the smaller dogs need to go more frequently. Smaller dogs are also able to gain access to places or areas that make it more difficult to notice. The result can be bad habits developing (house soiling). No matter the size of your dog, be as stringent and persistent with the training as possible, to ensure a desirable end result.
A puppy should be taken out:
The following are reasons why there may be a regression in training:
As time goes by your puppy will need less and less supervision, they will fall into a routine and will need to eliminate less frequently. The end result will be a fully trained puppy that will not soil the house unless there are unforeseen circumstances.
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