Housebreaking Your Dog

It is finally time for you to welcome your new addition to the family into your home. You spent weeks doing research and hours at the shelter picking out your new puppy. While you may be feeling overjoyed and excited, it is important to remember that when it comes to getting a dog, housebreaking is one of the most important items that you have to be prepared to have patience for. This process is not going to happen overnight and will require consistency from the first day the puppy enter its new living space.

In general, puppies are unable to maintain control of the muscle that allows them to hold off from relieving themselves until they are around 3 months old. If you have a puppy that is less than 3 months old, then it is important to learn the signs that it may exhibit when it has to relieve itself. These signs can include the puppy running in circles or acting very anxious. During this timeframe, it is important to try and confine the area that the puppy relieves itself within your home. Try keeping him or her in a certain area of the home that has floors that can be easily cleaned or keep the puppy in a crate. If the puppy begins to urinate in several spots in the home, the housebreaking process will only be made more complicated as it will continue to sniff out and reuse these locations.

The first thing that a new owner needs to understand is that a puppy does not understand wrongdoing. If your puppy has an accident on your favorite carpet and you react with anger, the puppy is not going to grasp that the act was wrong. Instead, you need to focus in on the moment that the puppy is relieving itself. In order to housebreak your puppy, you will need to show it significant amounts of praise right after it is done committing the act of relieving itself in the appropriate place. Puppies and dogs are people pleasers, so by showing them praise when they relieve themselves in the appropriate location, you will begin the process of housebreaking.

There are several methods that have shown positive results when it comes to housebreaking your new dog. One of these methods is known as crate training, which involves keeping your puppy in a crate whenever you are not around in an effort to try and teach it to control urges to relieve. Another method that is used for male dogs is the belly band, which is kept on in the home to control leg lifting and marking, but removed when the puppy goes outside. If you plan on keeping your puppy indoors, you can try the paper training method. This involves using layers of newspapers to teach the puppy where it is ok to relieve.

Regardless of what method you choose, the key to success in any technique is consistency. By continuously incorporating these methods into everyday life it will eventually become a routine that will make a happy and healthy situation for you and your new puppy.