Puppy Training: How Do I Train My Puppy?
About 90% of American pet puppies live indoors with their owners. You need to do some housebreaking with them if you are considering having them live in the home. Potty training a puppy is one of the situations many owners find themselves overwhelmed by. But it’s really not that hard to accomplish, it doesn’t need to be messy, and you don’t have to struggle with your pet when housebreaking him. Training needs to receive a significant amount of time devoted to it in order for it to be successful. You will need time for this, become a little more involved, and get some training tools like puppy training pads.
The Puppy is Boss
For those who own dogs or puppies, there are two major puppy training guidelines to follow. First and most importantly, don’t punish your pup for something you did not catch him do! And second, praise your puppy for the things he did do right. Do not train by only using “no” when you see your dog doing something it should not be doing. Desirable behavior should be met with praise and treats.
House Training/Breaking Puppies
There are different ways to housebreak puppies. At the beginning, encourage the puppy to “go” on newspapers or puppy training pads. Puppy pads are usually scented with chemicals that attract little doggies to use them. As soon as you see them starting with their pre-potty pattern of walking around and sniffing the floor, pick them up gently and without saying anything, and carry them over to the puppy training pads or paper and reward them for the doing their bathroom acts properly.
After things are progressing well and the puppy is using the puppy training pads or newspapers regularly, you can then locate them a little closer to the door and eventually outside. The change is made from concentrating on bathroom habits at a location inside the house to a location outside the house. You’ll soon see that you won’t need the training pads or papers in the house anymore.
The drawback of this approach to housebreaking is that more time is required to get the pup to do his business inside. Other popular methods of house training puppies involve puppy crate training or the use of cages plus constant pet owner supervision.
When using a cage or crate to housebreak your puppy, realize that puppies can’t go for more than about seven to eight hours without using the bathroom. This method usually works as most dogs treat cages and crates as their sleeping places and they do no want to soil their beds because they will be forced to lie in the mess. It is not a good idea to crate a puppy for long periods of time.
The use of crates/cages and papers/puppy pads is not required if you have constant supervision. Here pet owners choose to spend all the time necessary with their pet puppies. This works good for those who are retired, work from home, or any owner that can spend lots of time with the puppy. Pet owners can normally usher their dog outside as soon as the pre-potty signs are noticed with this technique. A constant watch must be kept on puppies to make sure that there are no accidents or slip-ups.
To sum up, puppy housebreaking and training should be treated as part of the ‘come’ and ’stay’ command trainings. However, toilet training and housebreaking your puppy will be the messiest types of training, and generally have more headaches than other sorts of dog training. Have faith!
