Puppy Training: Ways to Train My Puppy
April 3rd, 2009 | by Nick Vasquez |About 90% of American pet puppies live indoors with their owners. If you are thinking of having your dog live inside with you and your family, you have to go through the process of housebreaking them. Many pet owners are daunted by the responsibility of potty training a puppy. But it’s really not that hard to accomplish, it doesn’t need to be messy, and you don’t have to struggle with your pet when housebreaking him. You have to keep in mind though that this is a training issue and you have to put in a little more than just casual effort. You will need time, a little more involvement, as well as some training tools such as puppy training pads.
The Puppy is Boss
Two guiding rules exist for helping puppies and dog owners when training your puppy. The first and most important rule is not to punish your puppy unless you actually catch her in the act! 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. Praise them or offer them a reward when they do the right thing.
House Training/Breaking Puppies
There are different ways to housebreak puppies. 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. As soon as you see them starting with their pre-potty pattern of walking around and sniffing the floor, pick them up gently and without saying anything, and carry them over to the puppy training pads or paper and reward them for the doing their bathroom acts properly.
When the new dog is comfortable with the papers or puppy training pads, they can then be put near the door or even outside. The transition is accomplished by focusing their toilet habits in a specific in the home to an outside place. In the very near future you will have no need for papers or training pads indoors.
The drawback of this approach to housebreaking is that more time is required to get the pup to do his business inside. Some other popular techniques used for house training your puppy are puppy crate training or using cages which require constant looking after by the owner.
The maximum amount of time that dogs can hold their bladders and bowels is between seven and eight hours, so you should keep that in mind when using a crate or a cage, trying to housebreak your dog. Usually this technique is very effective because most puppies consider their cage or crate as their sleeping area and they don’t want to have to lie in their own mess. Leaving them in their cage or crate for very long, however, is not good to do.
Constant supervision on the other hand, does not involve the use of training paper or puppy pads, and crates or cages. Here pet owners choose to spend all the time necessary with their pet puppies. This is very ideal for people who work at home, retired persons, or owners who can afford to spend a lot of time with their puppy. With this method, pet owners usually hustle their puppy outside as soon as they notice the pre-potty signs. Puppies should be watched at all times to ensure that no accidents or slip-ups occur.
In summary, housebreaking your puppy should be considered a part of command trainings like ‘come’ or ’stay’. But puppy potty training and housebreaking will be the most difficult forms of puppy training due to the fact that they are simply the messiest. Don’t give up!