Doggy Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘potty training’

When you start to train a young puppy having the right dog crate is essential. When you take your puppy home, it will be unable to cope with the whole area of your house and it will be calm and happy in the perfect sized dog crate. Housebreaking a puppy is easy with a dog crate to help you. A good dog crate is an invaluable dog training tool.

If you housetrain a puppy using a dog crate, they are an excellent solution if your pup becomes overexcited, as it will calm down in a crate. All you have to do is put your puppy inside the crate in order to help it relax. A crate is a stress free way for a pup to remain unattended in your home and not get into mischief, or soil on your carpet.

Dog crates are a great way to feed your puppy in case it becomes easily distracted. Your puppy will focus on its food and eat until it has had enough and then you can take it away.

Using A Dog Crate Tips

1. Make sure that you get the appropriate size crate based on your dog’s height and width. Housebreaking your puppy depends on you having the correct sized crate. If the box is too large, then your puppy may use the bathroom on one side, but keep sleeping on the other side, which defeats the purpose of crate training in terms of potty training.

2. If you have a fast-growing puppy, then consider buying a large crate that is meant for an adult dog, but has a divider built into it. This way you can divide the crate in half so that your puppy will be able to lie down comfortably and still be able to turn around if needed. A divided dog crate can also be used for your larger puppy by removing the division bracket.

3. The type of bedding is an important aspect of your dog crate. Even though the crate may be the appropriate size for potty training, some dog owners have noticed that their puppies still use the brathroom inside. In most instances it turns out that the bedding that they laid down was a little too thick and had a tendency to induce urination in dogs.

Older dog crate training is a simple procedure too. You will find so much information is available to you for training older dogs and the use of a dog crate is an invaluable dog training tool. Any problems crate training can be overcome if you follow the recommended procedures for potty training or house training your dog.

Getting a new puppy?  I’ll bet you are so excited.  I’m not going to break your excitement, but I will tell you that once you get your puppy home he will push your patience further than you thought it could go.  One of the first, and most difficult, tasks is to teach your dog to go outside to potty.  This takes patience and effort on your part.  The biggest question new owners ask all the time is how to potty train a puppy.

If you try to potty train your dog to go to potty outside before it is a month old you may be wasting your time.  It’s easier and better to start potty training your puppy around two months of age.  At this point, the best approach is to work out some kind of routine with your puppy.  Haphazard training rarely works.

Determine how often you think your puppy needs to go out.  Establish a time range like every 30 minutes or every 45 minutes.  Then stick to your schedule to train your puppy.  As they grow older, the time between potty outings can grow farther apart.  It’s also a good idea to take the dog out before a meal so that you are not interrupted for a potty break during your meal.

Establishing a training routine and sticking to it will help you train your puppy more quickly.  It’s hard to accomplish without a schedule.  The sooner you establish a training schedule with your puppy, the better you will feel about your puppy and the more at ease the puppy will become.

If you think working on a routine takes potty training your dog too far, reconsider.  Establishing a routine is a proven way to train your dog and it is pretty simple to establish a regular routine.  Your dog will learn more easily when following a routine.

Sometimes you have to try to determine why your puppy doesn’t want to go outside.  This is difficult, but not the worst problem you will face.  There are other issues like puppy whining and barking.  Take one thing at a time.  Don’t give your puppy sensory overload.  Get him accustomed to pottying outside first.  This will be your most pressing task. Keep up and be persistent. In doing so, you will learn how to house break a puppy.

Housetraining

No training is more basic for pet owners than that first important lesson: Do it outside!

Teaching your pet to eliminate outside the home, not in it, usually starts between six and eight weeks of age. Dogs as young as four weeks can start house training, but at that age few have the muscular control to succeed.

Like any dog training plan, trainer patience is as important as the dog’s temperament. ‘Sit’, ’stay’ and other behaviors can often be learned in a few days. ‘Potty’ training your puppy sometimes takes weeks – maybe as short as two, often a month or more.

As with other learned behaviors, it helps to notice signs of the desired actions and enforce and direct them with a voice command followed by praise. In this case that technique works even more to the trainer’s advantage, since all dogs will naturally eliminate. The goal is to get them to do it when and where you want!

Watch for circling or squatting, then scoop up the pup, say ‘potty’ and quickly dash outside. The puppy may circle some more, but will often squat quickly. As she starts, say ‘Go potty’ ( or some other unique phrase) in a clear, firm (but not angry) voice. Wait until it’s finished and praise lavishly.

You won’t always be able to catch the puppy about to go, but don’t become angry or impatient when the dog eliminates indoors. It takes some time for the dog to learn to tell you it’s time to ‘go outside’. It also takes time for the muscles needed to control bladder and bowels to develop control.

Usually, puppies will need to eliminate every 2-3 hours. If you haven’t spotted pre-elimination behavior within that time, take the dog outside anyway. Issue the command ‘Go potty’ and wait. At first, usually, the dog will have no clue what you want.

Especially, even when outside, it helps to wait and watch for the desired behavior then issue the command. That helps the dog associate the command with the behavior. If your puppy still has not relieved himself after a few minutes and a few ‘Go potty’ commands, take him back inside for an hour. Of course, if you catch the pre-elimination behavior in less time, go outside again immediately.

Puppies have a surprising capacity to quickly learn what their ‘alpha’ (the leader of the pack) wants. This is almost always accomplished by associating a verbal command with behavior, followed by praise. Punishment is usually counter-productive, and nowhere more so than in waste elimination training. Never rub your pup’s nose in the accident.

Paper and/or crate training is preferred by some. A pup can be trained to potty on a newspaper, or on one of the chemically treated pads designed for the purpose. Some small breeds that live all day in apartments may not need to go outside at all.

The technique has a couple of downsides however. Unlike cats, dogs will hardly go in a perfumed litter box. Newspapers (even with the top layer removed after the dog goes) will eventually create an unpleasant smell in the house.

Also, long before the odor becomes perciptible to humans, dogs can smell their own distinctive aroma. Dogs don’t find the odor unattractive – quite the opposite. So that spot continues to be the problem.

Paper trained dogs will prefer to eliminate indoors. Occasionally they’ll miss the paper by only an inch, creating a mess to clean up.

Once the smell is in the carpet, the dog will continue to seek that spot out as its proper ‘place to go’. This makes training the dog to eliminate outside even more difficult. Best to suffer a few accidents than to create a hard-to-overcome habit.

Patience, praise and consistency are the key elements for successful dog training. Elimination training is the first challenge for you and your dog.

Get more tips and advice on housetraining or dog training at Luvurdog.com/dogtraining

Though dogs and human interactions stretch over centuries, communication between the two sometimes is still out of sync. The human half of the pair is usually the smarter party, but watching the usual training sessions one can have legitimate reason to wonder.

Dogs understand and respond at roughly the mental level of a human two-year-old, but there the similarity ends. Their senses operate differently – their color vision has a different response pattern to reds and greens, for example, and obviously their noses are infinitely more sensitive – and their minds process information differently as well. Anyone training dogs has to take this into account in order to avoid human frustration and canine misbehavior.

Dogs are by nature pack animals. Descendant from wolves – where even the ‘lone wolf’ is an anomaly – they’re social and function best with active interplay and within a strict hierarchy.

So, set aside half-an-hour per day, an hour would be better, for at least the first few months of training. Start your training as young as possible. Puppy training sometimes can be started as early as four weeks old.

Elimination (’potty’) training details we leave for elsewhere, but all training follows similar guidelines.

Establish dominance early on. Dogs have a natural hiearchy- there are alpha dogs, beta dogs, and the bottom dog is the omega. For a sane household, and a well-adjusted dog, the human (whether male or female) must always be the alpha male of the pack.

Depending on the breed, this will be either more difficult or easier. Like humans, some are simply more assertive than others. The most important training aid is your attitude, followed by collars, leashes and other training aids. Never let your dog be the boss.

You do not have to enforce your dominance with physical force. Sometimes, used appropriately, that will be necessary. Usually, simply being firm and willing to wait for compliance will be enough.

For many, placing them on their backs when young and placing a firm hand in the middle of the chest until they lower their paws – a sign of submission – will be enough. With some, reinforcing this by putting your face close to theirs, emulating dominant dog behavior, can help.

Keep a short leash to restrain the dog’s natural tendency to roam. Allow plenty of time for free running behavior, essential to dog health, but that’s before or after training, not during. At least, not at first.

Start simply by choosing short, clear commands that sound distinctly different: sit, stay, down, come. Use a firm, but not too loud of a voice. You’re in charge, but not angry. Avoid double-word commands like ’sit down’ or ’stay down’. These sound too much alike and can confuse your dog.

Be consitent with each verbal command by using the same tone, look and hand gesture. Eventually these can separate, but at first it’s essential to provide the simplest, most consistent form of communication.

Just like two-year old humans, dogs have limited capacity for grasping the subtleties of language. Assist their understanding by rigid consistency. Don’t use a single command word to mean more than one thing. ‘Down’ can mean ‘don’t jump on me or anyone else’, or it can mean ‘get on your stomach’, but it has to mean one thing only.

Be clear, be patient and be committed and the result will be a dog who trusts and listens to you. And that makes it worth the effort. Find more on dog training at Luvurdog.com/dogtraining