Dog Obedience Training For Your Pet Dog

Potty training a puppy is one of the first projects to begin once you bring the pup home. The basic steps are easy to understand, though following them will take some patience. The steps are: Keep the puppy close to you whenever you can. At particular times, quickly get him to the place where you want him to potty. Do any clean-up in a calm manner. Repeat the first three steps many times. Eventually your puppy will be potty trained!

Here is more information on each of these four points:

1. Keeping your puppy with you as much of the time as possible gives you the best chance of catching him just before he starts to pee or poop. Even if you catch him in the act, it helps the potty training — just say NO and take him to where you want him to do his stuff.

One way to keep your puppy with you is to attach his leash to a belt around your waist. That way, whatever you are doing around the house, you know right where your new best friend is. This method is excellent for bonding between you. Very young puppies really want to be right with you all the time anyway.

However you do it, stay close to your puppy. Crate training is also very useful for the times you can’t be together. That is beyond the scope of this article but I discuss it at length on my website.

2. As you potty train a puppy, he will gradually come to understand what it is you want. You want him to go to his pottying spot and do his business there. He will learn this faster if you take him to his place whenever he may need to use it. This includes:

Every single time he wakes up, whether first thing in the morning or after a nap.

Every time he eats or takes a big drink.

As you will soon discover, he wakes up, eats, and drinks many times in the course of a day! It’s also a good idea to take him out just before you go to bed.

A word about his pottying spot: If you have a fenced yard, that is great and you can even take him to a particular part of it if you wish. If you will be walking him on leash in your neighborhood, take a plastic bag or two for cleanup. You can also train him to use papers or even a litter box indoors, and this can be the best choice if you live in a high-rise apartment, for example.

3. Cleaning up his messes is a big part of caring for your puppy before he is fully potty trained. Don’t yell at him or express your displeasure in any way. He really won’t understand. Even if you think he looks guilty, he is just upset because you are. Would you expect a human infant not to need diapers for a long time? Well, potty training a puppy takes way less time than potty training a human, but still be patient!

4. As the saying goes, “Wash, rinse, and repeat.” That is, just keep going through these steps repeatedly. The more you keep up this process, the easier it will be for the puppy to understand what you are asking of him. We all learn by repetition, and this is very true of dogs.

So these are the essential points in potty training a puppy.