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4. House Training Or Housebreaking a Dog or Puppy

House training is the method by which you get your dog (ideally at the puppy stage) to relieve himself outside or else in a suitable place inside.

There are two commonly used methods of house training namely, the Direct Method and the Paper Method.

The Direct Method is used to teach your dog to relieve himself outdoors and the Paper Method is used predominately for dogs who are confined to the indoors.

What to Expect During House Training

It is almost guaranteed that if you keep your dog indoors, at some stage he will make a mess of your carpet. After all, how is your dog to know where the right place is to relieve himself?

Unless you can manage to monitor your puppy 24 hours a day, the house training process usually gets completed only by the time your puppy is at least 6 months old.

It’s normal for a young puppy to seem to only want to ‘eat and excrete’ since puppies are growing and developing rapidly at this stage; they eat more food, burn up more energy and seem to need to eliminate constantly because they are yet to develop bowel and bladder control making it difficult for them to ‘hold it’ as long as adult dogs can.

As long as you are watchful and persistent, you will be able to house train any dog.

House Training When You Are NOT Home

Confine your puppy to a small room that is safe for your pup and cover the entire floor with paper. At first there will be no specific time or space that your pup will choose to relieve itself – he will go just every where and any where!

He will also probably play with the papers, shred them to smithereens, chew on them, and drag them around too. Messes are part of their young lives and yours so it is important not to get upset and simply accept it as part of life with a young puppy. Persistently cleaning up the mess and laying down fresh paper must be done.

The Direct Method

The objective of the Direct Method is to get your puppy to associate relieving himself outside with your praise or a reward. This process usually takes around two weeks if things go well. Here is the technique to house train your puppy using this method.

1. Take your puppy outside soon after he has eaten and if he urinates and/or defecates outdoors praise him straight away.
2. If he doesn’t relieve himself straight away, take your puppy outside at least once every hour so that he has every opportunity to relieve himself outside.
3. In between, if he defecates inside then scold him and immediately take him outside. Soaking up any indoor accidents with newspaper and taking that newspaper outside to the place where you want your puppy to relieve himself will give them the idea that this is where he is expected to relieve himself.
4. Discontinue scolding the puppy once you are outside, lest he think that outside is not the place to urinate or defecate either.
5. It is best to take him to the same spot every time so that your puppy reinforces the association with outdoors and defecation.
6. Once your puppy has figured out that he must relieve himself outside, you can dispose off his feces.

For the Direct Method to work effectively it is important that you try your best to ensure that your puppy does not urinate or defecate inside as the residual smell will prompt him to go indoors again.

Considering that a dog’s sense of smell is far better than our own, it is good to use effective odor neutralizers especially designed for use with animals to tackle this problem. These are easily available with most veterinarians and pet stores.

The Paper Method

The Paper Method of house training is necessary in circumstances where you will not be able to let your dog out easily, for instance if you live in a high rise apartment building.

You will need to set aside a small room for two to four weeks until you get the desired results. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Cover the entire floor of the chosen room with paper.
2. After your dog has had his meal, place him in the room on the papers.
3. After he has defecated and/or urinated clean out all the newspaper except for one sheet.
4. Place fresh paper over the floor taking care to leave one old sheet on top of the new paper. Your puppy will be able to locate the old sheet and will usually return to that spot when he needs to relieve himself.
5. When he starts using the same spot, reduce the area of the floor covered with paper to half the room.
6. Gradually reduce the area covered with paper. If he does it on the paper, then praise him straight away, conversely if he tries to relieve himself on the uncovered floor then scold him immediately and lead him back to the paper.

When he begins making do with one sheet of paper you have achieved your goal!