Train My Puppy: A How-To on Puppy Training

Around 90% of puppies live in the home in America. Dogs kept inside with your family and you need to be housebroken. The process of potty training a puppy is a prospect that intimidates many dog owners. It is not that difficult, it doesn’t have to be messy and housebreaking can be accomplished without a struggle. 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. Remember to never punish your puppy for something you didn’t see him do. Secondly, always tell puppy how good he is for the things he did correctly. Don’t fall into the trap of only responding with ‘no’ when you see your pet doing something you don’t want them to do. Let them know through praises and rewards when they do something right.

Housebreaking/House Training your Puppy

There are many different techniques to house train your pup. When you start indoors, encourage them to use papers or puppy training pads for their bathroom acts. Puppy pads are usually scented with chemicals that attract little doggies to use them. When you notice them doing their pre-potty routine of sniffing and walking around, take them gently, without saying a word, to the puppy training pads or newspaper and praise them for going to the bathroom correctly.

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. Crate training usually works because dogs do not like to mess their sleeping places, then have to lie in it. 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. In this case, the owners elect to be with their puppies for as much time as necessary. This works good for those who are retired, work from home, or any owner that can spend lots of time with the puppy. This method usually allows the owner to get their puppy out of the house when they first recognize the signs that the puppy needs to go to the bathroom. A constant watch must be kept on puppies to make sure that there are no accidents or slip-ups.

In summary, housebreaking your puppy should be considered a part of command trainings like ‘come’ or ’stay’. 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. Don’t give up!