There are four steps to my house training formula and I’m going to go through each step in detail:

1- Prevention- Dogs are creatures of habit. This is one of their qualities that allow them to be trained. If a dog gets locked into one behavior pattern that is the behavior pattern that is the most likely to persist. Only some sort of catalyst can change a behavior pattern. In the case of training a dog, YOU are the catalyst. If preventing your dog from going to the bathroom in the house is going to occur it is going to be due to YOUR actions. Prevention boils down to two main methods:

a. Crate training. Regardless of whether your canine is a puppy or adult he needs crate training if he isn’t house trained. Keep your puppy in his crate when you aren’t home, while you sleep, and any other time you can’t pay attention to him. In the beginning this may be a lot but don’t worry, you will be able to wean him off the crate eventually. Here are a few tips for acclimating your puppy to the crate:

i. Don’t put stuff in there. Things like beds and flimsy toys are liable to get destroyed and many dogs have choked on bedding while being in their crate. Bedding is also soft and absorbent. Guess what puppies like to pee on? Soft and absorbent stuff like grass, dirt, YOUR CARPET, and bedding left in the crate. ii. Feed your
puppy in the crate. Don’t LEAVE food in the crate but when it comes time for a meal put him in there with the food for 15 minutes then take it out.
iii. Put your puppy in for a few seconds and a few moments here or there only to let him right out. If your puppy goes in the crate 10 times a day but really only stays in there for any significant time once or twice you will ‘trick’ your dog into realizing that the crate isn’t some sort of end all that he needs to fear.

b. Keep your puppy on a leash in the home. This may sound strange to have a dog on the leash in the house but it does so many great things:

i. It allows you to SEE everything. As a puppy owner you need to control how your puppy interacts with every part of his environment. You need to control how he interacts with your couch; does he jump on it or leave it alone? You need to control how he responds to your guests; does he pester them or does he leave them alone? You need to control how he interacts with your carpet; does he pee on it or does he walk on it? If you want to control his interaction with his environment you need to SEE his interaction with his environment. You can’t find an ‘accident’ after the fact and do anything about it. You need to see things as they happen and the leash allows you to do that. Leash training isn’t only critical for the house training part of this section but also will be vital for training manners.
ii. It sets the tone for your home. I enter a lot of homes where the client’s dog is now an adult and is constantly doing laps and is basically a frantic fool. By keeping the dog on a leash from a young age you prevent the dog from growing up being wild and crazy in the home. If he never had the chance to do so he is much more likely to be calm as he matures. This also goes for adult dogs. You can effectively reverse a chaotic and hyper dog with some leash training around the house.
iii. Leash training forms a close bond. The leash is a literal tie to you and really helps the dog look to you as a leader. Remember, leash training in the house isn’t forever. It is a good way to start proper training and proper relationship, though.

2- Encourage the puppy to use the bathroom outside- This is perhaps the easiest part of house training a dog and I find that many people are already doing it. Very simple, when your puppy goes to the bathroom outside praise him. Throw him a party! Pet him and give him treats and tell him that he is doing the right thing.

3- Correct the dog when he uses the bathroom inside- There is a method that is becoming more prevalent in recent years. This method calls for ignoring your puppy when he goes to the bathroom in the house and simply taking him outside. This is crazy! The puppy learns that going to the bathroom outside is good but never learns that going to the bathroom inside is wrong.

Correcting a puppy for using the bathroom in the house is important but don’t confuse corrections with harshness. You don’t need to be mean to correct a dog. With your dog on a leash, however, you are in the perfect position to quickly correct your dog for accidents. As your puppy begins to squat to relieve himself start rushing for the door as you give a few swift and firm tugs on the leash. Say ‘no’ a few times as you do so. Make sure your corrections are propelling you toward the door so that you can quickly get him outside. Hopefully he can finish his bathroom break outside so that you can praise him for that.

If you can consistently praise him for using the bathroom outside and consistently correct him for using the bathroom inside it is a no-brainer what is going to occur with time.

4- Get your dog on a routine/schedule- There are three things that I like to put on a routine with my puppies or adult dogs that are being house trained.
a. Food- It is important that your dog not have access to food all day long. He should be fed on a schedule. Put down his food dish, or better yet, put it in his crate. Allow him 15 minutes and if he eats, great. If he doesn’t, he’ll be hungrier next time. Scheduled feedings are good for your dog’s health. Young puppies need meals and big injections of calories. If you leave food out all day your puppy is likely to get very picky and only eat a bit here or there.

Scheduled feedings are also good for establishing dominance. If food is left out for him all day that means that food has nothing to do with you. He needs to know that YOU are the giver of food. Food equals paycheck to a dog. If the dog has a never ending bowl of paycheck, what does he need you for?

Scheduled feedings are also good for house training. If you know when your dog is eating you also start to know when he needs to poop.

b. Water- I try to make sure that my puppies don’t take enormous drinks. Enormous drinks make it hard to hold it. If I see my pup drinking for longer than normal I’ll just use the leash to get him away from the water dish until a bit later.

With young puppies I also control their evening water intake. If the puppy is having a hard time making it through the night without waking up I will take away the water about three hours before bedtime.

c. Bathroom breaks- Take your pup out to the bathroom first thing in the morning (and I mean first thing, even before taking care of yourself) and last thing at night (and I mean last thing, even if you have to wake your puppy up to go potty). Take your puppy out right after eating AND one hour after eating. Take your puppy out about 15 minutes after a big drink, take him out after a big play session, and take him out any time you return home and take him out of the crate.

This house training system works great. In a nutshell we prevent the dog from going to the bathroom in the house, correct him when he does, encourage him to go potty outside, and set up a routine for his success. We cover the house training from every angle.

This is only the first part of house training, though. We need to eventually wean him off the leash and the crate so that you can give your dog free run of the home. Here is how you do it:

– When you notice that your dog is doing great and has been several weeks without an accident then start giving him more freedom. Keep the leash on him but let it drag around instead of you holding it. Allow him to venture around the room you are in but don’t allow him to get out of sight yet.

– As he does well with this step then you can let him briefly leave your sight and venture into the next room for a few moments before you call him back.

– When he is doing well at this stage of freedom then start to allow him to roam the house WHILE you are home. He is still in the crate while you are gone.

– When he has free run of the house while you are home then you can allow him to sleep outside the crate at night time. At this point I switch to a ‘tab leash’ as well. This is a simple leash that you can make with 12″-18″ of light rope and a leash clip. It allows you to maintain some level of control but doesn’t give complete freedom yet.

– When he is doing great at this stage then start leaving him out of the crate while you leave the house. Start out by leaving for only two minutes, then five, then ten and so on. VERY GRADUALLY you will increase the length of time that you are gone until he can be alone for hours at a time while you are gone. At this point I have the dog leash-less basically all the time. You should have no more need for a regular leash or a tab leash around the house.

– At any point, as you are increasing the freedom you are giving him, if he backslides and goes potty in the house just take it in stride. Go back a step in the freedom he was allowed and build him back up to where he can do better.

These aspects of prevention, encouraging good behavior, correcting inappropriate behavior, and building a routine aren’t only for house training. They also serve for house manners. Think about it, chewing falls under this same umbrella. If we can prevent chewing from happening through supervision, encourage him to chew on his toys, and correct him for chewing on your stuff we can fix a chewing problem. Insert that same logic into a problem of getting on the couch, stealing your socks, or whatever other ‘manners’ problem your dog has.

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I have been called many times by dog owners who have just moved into a new home and tell me that their dog has become un-housetrained. Changing homes can often have an adverse affect on the housetraining of your adult dog.

Dogs are creatures of association. They associate certain times of the day with eating, associate the word ‘sit’ with putting their rear on the ground, and associate the sound of a car as their owner coming home. The same happens with an adult dog that has been housetrained. This dog has associations built in with every part of the housetraining process. He has associations about where in the yard he goes to the bathroom. He has associations with certain times in the day when you take him out. He has associations with the door that he exits when he feels nature calling. The entire process of going to the bathroom is a series of associations. But the most important of all: when he is properly housetrained he associates going to the bathroom in ‘his’ house as incorrect and going to the bathroom outside as correct.

When you take your dog to a new home there is a chance that so many associations will be disrupted and broken that he begins to go to the bathroom in the house. There are a few things that you can do when you move into a new house to prevent this problem or fix it if it has started.

Your new home smells differently than your last home. Your new home looks different. The texture of your flooring is different. There is different paint on the walls. Basically, there are a lot of things in your new home that make it feel different than your last home. For this reason, many dogs don’t associate the new home as a place to not go to the bathroom.

The first thing to make sure to do is to keep your dog on the same routine that he is used to. Many housetrained dogs are really just ‘routine trained’ dogs. They are so used to the fact that a certain part of the day means bathroom time. Their association with going to the bathroom is more about time of day than it is about where they are going to the bathroom. So keep your dog on the same routine and you may find that it helps smooth the transition.

Designate a new spot for your dog. Part of the housetraining association is where your dog goes to the bathroom. When you move, your dog no longer has his spot. Choose a spot for him. Find an easily accessible area in your new place and take him to that spot at bathroom time. Encourage him to go to the bathroom and when he does give him a lot of praise. Now the key; don’t clean up the mess. That’s right, we want him to form a new association with a new place so leave his mess as a scent anchor to keep drawing him back to that general area. Don’t leave too much of a mess. Just go without cleaning up once or twice. You will soon notice that he will feel comfortable in that area of your new yard.

Many dogs, male dogs especially, like to mark new territory with urine. I have found that this is the biggest cause of housetraining mistakes in a new home. The dog comes into the new place, experiences hundreds of new smells and wants to mark over them like crazy. This happens especially if the previous occupants had dogs. There are two things that will help curb this. The first is constant supervision. Your dog should never be left alone. If you are able to supervise him you can catch him in the act of marking and nip it in the bud right away. Second, if you can’t supervise him, use a crate. Keep him in a crate while you can’t watch him and that way you know he won’t be going to the bathroom in the house. When you notice that he has been fine in the house for several days or weeks, you can wean him off the supervision and crate.

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The key to re-housetraining your dog is re-building the same associations you once did the first time he was housetrained. Accomplish this, and he will have perfect manners in your new home.

As many of you know I do a popular radio show devoted to dog training and I take call-in questions from dog owners and give them advice for how to fix their dog’s behavior. Today I was speaking to a dog owner about their dog’s house training, or lack thereof, I should say.

The owner described a behavior pattern of the dog sneaking off to go to the bathroom in various parts of the house. The owner would find the ‘accident’ later and would proceed to show the accident to the dog while scolding. The owner swore up and down that the dog knew it was doing the wrong thing because she would always cower when being shown her ‘accident’. She couldn’t figure out why the dog would continue doing it if she knew it was bad. How many of you are in this boat? I hear this type of thing all the time whether it is in relation to going to the bathroom, chewing up a shoe, getting on the couch, etc. Each time the owner swears the dog is doing it in spite of knowing it is wrong. Allow me to teach you something about dogs that you may not know.

Dogs don’t operate with the same moral compass that we as humans have, or hopefully have, I should say. What I mean is that if I catch my daughter stealing something at a store I can take that opportunity to teach her that stealing is wrong. From that moment, ideally, she can now know that stealing in ANY store is wrong. If she steals again she is likely doing it despite knowing that it is wrong.

This is how humans think and learn. Dogs aren’t equal in that respect. If I teach my dog that something is wrong in one setting he can’t take that moral lesson and apply it across the board. He just can’t. That means that if I teach my dog that going to the bathroom in the house is wrong he can only understand that with me in the picture. As long as I am around he can know that going to the bathroom is wrong. As soon as I am gone, however, he may go to the bathroom. Does he do it knowing it is wrong? Absolutely not! For him it is simple equation. Dad is here = Don’t go to the bathroom. Dad is gone = Going to the bathroom in the house is no longer wrong.

Some may be scratching their heads wondering, then, how is it ever possible to leave a dog alone and not have him eat the couch, poop on the floor, and pee on your wall. The way you do that is by simple conditioning. While you are home you correct misbehaviors. When you are gone you prevent misbehaviors from happening by using the crate. In this way the dog never experiences going to the bathroom in the house or destroying your stuff. What that means is that after time I can gradually give my dog small doses of freedom while I am gone and gradually build that time to hours and hours.

So the next time you swear that your dog ‘knows he did wrong’ just realize that he is simply reacting to your angry tone and not the fact that he just destroyed something.

If I stop there I know I am going to get more questions. I know some people are going to say, “Wait, wait, wait. Yesterday I came home and my dog was already hanging his head like he did something wrong. I didn’t even have a chance to find his accident; he was already acting with regret.”

Once again this is a misunderstanding of behavior. The reason a dog does this is that he gets improper communication. Let’s take the example of the dog going to the bathroom in the house. His owner catches it after the fact several times. Each time the owner returns the dog to the mess and scolds him. Soon the dog starts to realize that if there is an accident in the house he is going to get in trouble. It’s not the fact that HE POOPED in the house; it is the mere fact that POOP IS IN THE HOUSE and you, the owner, are going to get mad. Dogs do have memories. He likely remembers that he was the one that pooped. But in order for you to make an association with THE ACT OF POOPING you have to catch it in the act. You can’t catch it later and hope to have success.

So follow a program of working on behaviors while you are home/crate training while you are gone/gradually giving freedom to be alone outside the crate and you will have success in having a poop and destruction free home. Good luck.

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