The day you bring your new puppy home can be very exciting. That furry little thing is a bundle of joy. Soon after, the realization sets in that puppy is going to need to be housebroken. That realization is usually about the time of the first potty accident in the house. Every puppy needs to be housetrained and the sooner the better. This is not something you will want to delay very long.
My assumption is you will want this done just as fast as possible. To accomplish your goal, you will need to be attentive and diligent. Consistence is the key to success. Remind yourself frequently that thousands of others have been successful at housetraining a puppy and you will be too.
You will need to understand a couple of things. First, a puppy does not have a fully developed bladder and bowel system, so they physically cannot “hold” as long as more mature dogs. Second, the closer you can monitor your puppy, the faster the process will go. If you have brought your puppy into a household where no one is home during the day, you must expect the process to take a while. On the other hand, if you can monitor him/her 24 hours each day, the process will go reasonably fast.
There are basically two acceptable methods of housetraining. First is the paper method. You train your puppy to go on newspaper and slowly move the paper towards the door and then out. With some diligence, this method works quite well. You will want to start with a fairly large out of the way papered area, maybe in a bathroom or laundry room. Reduce the amount paper on the floor and be sure to always praise your puppy for going on the paper. Begin the process of moving the paper towards the door and then out as soon as you observe fairly good consistency of using the paper as the place to eliminate. While I use the word “paper” here, some people prefer using Puppy Training Pads available at pet stores and on-line. This is a matter of personal preference and both are equal as far as the training is concerned.
The other method is the crate method. This process requires you keep your dog restricted to a crate and frequently take him/her outside to eliminate. While this can be effective, I prefer the paper method. There are some benefits to the crate method such as your puppy won’t be chewing on your furniture when you are not looking and he/she won’t be going potty in areas you don’t want. It is important that you never put your pet in the crate without first taking them outside to potty and again immediately after you remove them from the crate. Make sure that your puppy gets plenty of time out of the crate for exercise, etc. Your puppy should not spend over two hours at a stretch in the crate, except at night. Total crate time per day should not exceed ten hours.
In my opinion, crate training is the least desirable of the two methods mentioned here. Some puppy owners use a combination of the two methods with a pretty good success rate. There are some distinct benefits to having your pet accustomed to a crate. This can be very handy for traveling and visiting others when you need to bring your dog along.
There are other methods of housetraining, but I believe these are the best two to make your puppy housetraining turbo-charged. Once you have this necessary task out of the way you will really begin to enjoy your pet. Happy housetraining!
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Wayne C. Weeks –
Wayne is a published author, writer and blogger. In addition, he is a dog lover with two dogs now, and has very rarely been without a dog most of his life.
For a FREE short e-course titled “Ten ways to return your dog’s love.” Please visit: http://hotshorturl.com/uw08 If you like dogs, you will love this e-course!