Easy Tips For Housebreaking A Puppy

By U Learn It | March 19, 2010

Housebreaking a puppy is not difficult if you are committed and patient. Remembering that you are working with a baby that is in a stage of development where they can pick up bad habits will help you when you are trying to plan your potty training strategy.

Puppies can learn to go potty outside very quickly if you are consistent and do not over-react. When you want to learn how to potty train a puppy quickly and easily, following a few simple tips will get you started. It will be important that you not yell at your puppy or rub their nose in a mess. Puppies do not learn from this kind of discipline. They often will get more confused about where they are supposed to do because everywhere they sniff, they will smell the mess, which tells their brain that it is okay to go in that spot.

It will be much easier to train your puppy to go outside if you start training them to do so. While newspaper training is used by a lot of people, it is often hard to get the dog to go outside once they have got a spot in the home where they always go. Plan on training your dog to go outside from the very beginning.

Puppies work very well with a schedule. Plan on taking your puppy out when you get up in the morning, right after they eat or drink, and right before bedtime. Developing this habit will help your puppy to go potty outside when they are supposed to. You also do not want to feed your puppy food or snacks two hours before bedtime. If they eat before bedtime, they will probably have an accident during the night.

When your puppy begins to turn in circles or sniff around, it wants to go outside. Put the puppy out side while saying. “It’s time to go potty”. Whenever you put your puppy out to go potty you should have a phrase that you use to reinforce the action. This will help when the dog is older and you are visiting a strange house. When you say “It’s time to go potty”, your dog will be ready to go potty.

There will be accidents and messes. When there is an accident, clean it up right away and spray the area with deodorizer to remove any scent of the mess from the area. Don’t give the puppy any attention while you are doing this. Only praise the puppy when it does it’s business outside. Dogs are very smart and even as a puppy will learn that they will be praised for going potty outside but will be ignored when they go indoors.

Cues are one of the greatest tips for potty training. If you feed your dog canned food, then you are already aware that they will come the minute they hear the can opener. Use this technique as a training tool. Using a bell or timer set it for 45 minutes or an hour and when the bell rings, put the puppy outside to go potty.

As your puppy gets older, you can extend the time between the bell. If you use a little silver bell and hang it by the door, you can easily train your dog to ring the bell when they want to go outside. Creating the habit to go outside is one of the best tips for housebreaking a puppy that you will learn.