House-Training Your Dog
House-training an adult dog is very simple and can be accomplished in one week, IF YOU ARE WILLING TO PUT THE TIME AND EFFORT INTO IT. It's simple and easy for 2 reasons:
- Dogs are extremely particular about where they urinate and defecate.
- Your dog WANTS TO PLEASE YOU. He wants your approval more than anything else in the world.
Three Rules
There are 3 basic principles for house-training an adult dog or a puppy:
- You should reward your dog each and every time that he "goes" in the right place. Obviously, this means that you have to be watching him when he's out in the yard, or walking on the leash.
- For the week that you are in-training, whenever you're not at home, or not paying attention, you dog should be confined so that he cannot make mistakes. Don't allow him to fail.
- If your dog does make a mistake, reprimand him IMMEDIATELY. You must never punish him after the fact. If you come home and find a mistake, clean it up and forget it. Try to catch him before or during a mistake. Then, yell his name loudly. This will stop him from whatever he's doing. Then quickly take him outside, and when he goes, praise him enthusiastically.
House-training a puppy
A puppy cannot physically be trained to "hold it" for the 8-9 hours you're away at work or the 6-8 hours you're sleeping until he's at least 4-5 months old. Until then, you have 2 options.
- Keep him confined in a room (like the kitchen, bathroom or warm garage) and paper train him at the same time you're training him to go outside.
- Keep the puppy outside in a run or fenced yard with warm, dry shelter (no very young puppy should live outside when the weather is bad). If he basically lives outside, make sure, as with any adult dog, that he comes in for family life and love and companionship.
Whichever of the two you choose, when you're with your pup, use the same training methods for encouraging him to go outside as you would with an adult dog.
The key to house-training a dog of any age is to let him know what you expect of him, in a way he can understand, and to praise him enthusiastically each and every time he does the right thing. You should never punish your dog after the fact for going in the wrong place (he will only learn to be afraid of you), and never shove a dog's nose in his own feces. The only lesson he learns from that is that he has a cruel owner.