Dog Training – House Breaking Your New Puppy
No training is a lot more basic for pet owners than that very first vital lesson: Do it outside the house!
Teaching your puppy to potty outside the home, not in it, typically gets under way somewhere between six and eight weeks of age. Puppies as young as four weeks have been started on the process, but at that age only a few possess the muscular mastery to be successful.
Just like any dog instruction routine, trainer patience is as vital as the pet’s temperament. ‘Sit’, ‘stay’ along with other behaviors may generally be learned in a few days. ‘Potty’ training usually will take weeks – from time to time as small as two, frequently a month or more.
As with other learned behaviors, it helps to observe for signs of the desired actions and enforce and direct them with a voice command followed by praise. In this situation that process works much more for the trainer’s advantage, given that all dogs will naturally eliminate. The secret is to get them accomplish it when and where you would like!
View for signs od imminent potty behavior, such as circling or squatting, then pick up the pup, say ‘outside’ and dash outside. The puppy may well circle some more, but will frequently squat straight away. As it starts, say ‘Go potty’ (or some other specific phrase) in the clear, firm (but not mad) voice. Wait until it is completed and praise the puppy lavishly.
You won’t always be able to catch the puppy about to start, but don’t become mad or impatient when the dog has an accident inside. This will take time for the puppy to learn to convey to you it is time to ‘go outside’. It also takes time for the muscles necessary to control bladder and bowels to develop.
Young puppies need to potty every 2-3 hours, on average. If you haven’t spotted pre-elimination behavior within that time, take the dog outdoors anyway. Issue the command ‘Go potty’ and wait. At first, typically, the puppy will have no clue what you need.
Yet again, even when outdoors, it helps to wait and observe for the preferred behavior then say the command. That helps the puppy link the command with the behavior. If the puppy hasn’t eliminated after several minutes and a few ‘Go potty’ commands, take it back inside for an hour. Of course, should you notice the pre-elimination conduct in less time, go outside again immediately.
Dogs have a surprising capability to quickly learn what their ‘alpha’ (the leader of the pack) wants. This is practically always accomplished by associating a verbal command with actions, followed by praise. Punishment is typically counter-productive, and nowhere more so than in waste elimination training. In no way rub a dog’s nose in waste.
Paper and/or crate training is preferred by some. A pup could be trained to go on a newspaper, or on one of the chemically treated pads made for that purpose. Some small breeds that live all day inside the house might not require to go outdoors at all.
The approach has a couple of downsides but. Unlike cats, puppies will rarely go inside a perfumed litter box. Newspapers (even with all the top layer removed following the dog goes) will eventually produce an unpleasant smell inside the house.
Also, long before the odor becomes disgusting to people, puppies can smell their own distinctive scent. They don’t find it unattractive – quite the opposite. And that’s the distress.
Puppies which are paper trained will usually choose to eliminate indoors. At times they’ll miss the paper by only an inch, producing a mess to clean up.
As soon as the odor is within the carpet, the puppy will often search for that spot out as its right ‘place to go’. This makes training the puppy to potty outdoors even more hard. Best to suffer a few accidents than to develop a hard-to-overcome habit.
Patience, praise and consistency are the keys to any puppy training. House training may be the first challenge for you and your dog.
Filed under: Dog Training
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