Dog Potty Training Ideas

It is essential to potty train your puppy to prevent accidents from happening in your home. Puppies may not be completely trained until they are 6 months old, but you can make training more effective by being consistent with potty schedules and how you react to successes and the inevitable accidents.

  1. Crate Training

    • Crate training is a method of potty training that utilizes the notion a dog will do everything in its power to not soil its sleeping area. Give your puppy a crate that is only large enough to be a bed. Allow your puppy to spend time in the crate when you are not able to attend to the puppy. A puppy can hold its bladder for up to seven or eight hours, according to PetEducation.com. While you don't want to leave your puppy in the crate for extended periods of time, you should leave it in for several hours. When you take it out, take it immediately outside to go to the bathroom to learn it's the place to potty.

    Paper Training

    • Paper training uses either newspapers or absorbent pads as the spot where your puppy should go to the bathroom. Many commercial puppy training pads are treated with a chemical aroma that attracts the puppy to the pad, indicating it as a suitable place to soil. As your puppy becomes accustomed to using the papers or pads, move it closer to the door until they are outside. When your puppy understands that it must go outside to potty, then you can remove the pads inside altogether. This method may take longer for your puppy to become potty trained compared to a crate because you are working from the inside of the home to the outside.

    Immediate or No Response

    • Part of being consistent with your dog is giving it immediate and proper verbal cues. If you catch your puppy having an accident, then you need to be firm and say "No," and move the puppy to an appropriate spot to relieve itself. If you find a spot where your puppy had an accident, it won't understand what it did wrong if you start telling it "Bad dog." It may have been chewing on a chew-toy when you found the accident and will now associate chewing on a toy as being a bad dog. When your puppy is going to the bathroom in the proper location, then give it praise and tell it "Good dog." Being consistent and understanding how your puppy views its behavior helps potty training move along faster.