Easily Housetrain Your Puppy

House Breaking a Puppy - The Easy Way
By Anthony W Robinson

Housebreaking a puppy is one of the most challenging things a new pet owner faces. Before you get too frustrated with the seeming lack of results, you must first understand how your puppies body works and why you're having these problems. It may surprise you to learn that you may be reinforcing this behavior rather than curtailing it.

Understanding your puppy

The first step in housebreaking your puppy is to understand what your puppy is and is not capable of. For example, your puppy does not have the ability to "hold it" until he's about 12 weeks old. To scold a dog younger than 12 weeks is an exercise in futility. If your puppy is less than 12 weeks, you have to make sure to let him outside frequently to give him a chance to go. It's totally unrealistic to expect your puppy to hold it all day while you're at work. It would be best if someone could let him out during the day to give him a chance to eliminate outside.

Housebreaking a Puppy - The Easy Way

The easiest way to housebreak a puppy is to take him to the same spot in the yard every time and use the same command to let your puppy know what he's supposed to be doing. If you walk him all over the yard, he's just hanging out with you, not knowing why you're outside. He's just happy to be there. You'll have to make sure that everyone in the house knows and uses the same spot in the yard and the same command. The key here is repetition.

What NOT to do

You never want to rub your dogs nose in anything. Not only is this inhumane and barbaric, it's also counterproductive. Rubbing his nose in it only reinforces that this is where you want him to go. He has no idea that you're upset because he went, he just knows you're showing it to him. For you to correct your dog, you must catch him in the act. If you don't catch him while he's doing it, he won't know why you're mad. If you find a present on the floor and take your dog to it to scold him, he doesn't know that you're scolding him for going in the house, he just knows that the mess itself is bad. This leads to them going in strange places, not because they know they shouldn't be going in the house, but because they know that a mess on the floor makes you unhappy.

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