Housetraining Puppies: Advice from Authors and Experts

Puppies are cute, friendly and produce a surprising amount of urine and feces which are often deposited in places all about the home. Discovering another pile of feces or stepping in a puddle of urine can try the patience of a saint, let alone the average person. Although advice from an actual saint about housetraining puppies is not currently available, advice from dog trainers, breeders and rescue organizations are.

Natural Training

Start off on the right path on the very first day the puppy is brought home. Before going in the home, take the puppy to the designated potty spot. Wait until the puppy squats. Praise and pet the puppy. This gives a puppy the right idea. The KISS Guide to Raising a Puppy (DK Publishing; 2002) notes that you may have to squat down alongside the puppy in order to see the squatting motion, especially if the puppy is from a toy breed.

Puppies usually make a distinctive behavior before they squat to urinate or defecate. Some will walk around in circles, sniffing. Others will start to scratch the ground. Still others may whine. It is up to the puppy owner to figure out the particular signal his or her puppy makes. This is the signal to take the puppy outside to the designated toilet spot or to a pile of newspapers if the puppy is to be paper trained.

Be sure not to bring the puppy inside immediately after squatting or the puppy may deliberately try to hold onto urine and feces in order to remain outside. Playing with the puppy or staying outside for at least another minute can help prevent this. Be understanding if the weather is bad. Would you want to go outside to do your business in the pouring rain?

Crate Training

Puppies often get their first potty training lessons from their mothers, if the mothers are not shut up in a cage or kennel. When the puppies begin to walk from two to four weeks old, they will follow their mothers when she goes out to relieve herself, according to "Dog Whisperer" Caesar Milan. Dogs instinctively want to relive themselves far away from where they sleep. This is the theory behind crate training.

Unless the puppy's owner stays at home and can constantly let the puppy outside, using a crate is the best alternative, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Because the puppy does not want to soil its bed, it has an incentive to learn to hold its bladder and bowels for a few hours. The crate should be the puppy's special den and never be used as a place to send the puppy as punishment. Keeping the crate in the living room or a room where people are can help the puppy acclimate to the crate.

Puppies need to be taken outside on a schedule because these are the times the puppy is most likely to urinate or defecate. This helps sets the puppy up to win. According to Caesar Milan, puppies need to be taken out:

• 1. Five to 30 minutes after meals
• 2. Right when they wake up from a night's sleep or a long nap
• 3. After vigorous exercise
• 4. After car rides or other trips

Cleaning Accidents

If the puppy has an accident, do not make a fuss. Never rub the puppy's nose in its mess. This is cruel. Puppies have very short memories. Unless you catch them in the act of defecating or urinating, they will have no idea why you are yelling at them. Just clean up the mess and continue on with your schedule.

Always use an enzyme-based cleaner for urine or feces. When puppies walk in circles, sniffing, they are sniffing for faint traces of urine and feces to let them know where the toilet area is. Cleaners like ammonia smell like urine. If there is a problem cleaning that one area, stick a pile of old newspapers or disposable "piddle pads" on the area to help minimize damage.

Puppies also normally release a few small drops when very scared or excited. This is called submission urination. Yelling at the puppy for submissive urination will only make it urinate more. This type of urination usually goes away by itself when the puppy is about a year old.

Summary

As dog breeder and author Liz Palika says, "Puppies make mess. It's that simple." Expecting a puppy to never have an accident in the home is not realistic. Puppies can be successfully housetrained only after considerable patience, keeping to a housetraining schedule and properly cleaning up any accidents in the home.

Sources

Milan, Caesar. How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond. Random House; 2009.

Palika, Liz. The KISS Guide to Raising a Puppy. DK Publishing; 2002.

Humane Society of the United States: http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/crate_training.html