In this article, we go over 7 tips for dog potty training. If you’ve brought home a young puppy or just adopted an older dog, one of the first things you will have to teach your pup is where to go potty and where not to go potty!
7 Tips For Dog Potty Training
1. Use The Crate
Remember the adage “proper preparation prevents poor performance.” This phrase couldn’t be more true when it comes to potty training your dog.
Essentially you want to use your dog’s crate to prevent your pup from having potty any accident in your house, while your dog is learning where the correct location to go “potty” is.
Remember, if your pup is struggling with “potty” training don’t leave your pup unsupervised because if we leave our pups to “figure it out on their own, without guidance accidents are bound to happen. So use the crate to your advantage and prevent accidents!
2. Get Your Dog On A Feeding Schedule
The very next tips for dog Potty training to consider is getting your dog on a feeding schedule!
That means eliminating any sort of “free feeding.”
“Free Feeding”: is when you leave your pups food bowl filled so that your pup can graze and eat their food throughout the day.
The main reason we want to eliminate free-feeding is that it’s a lot easier to predict how soon after your pup eats does he or she have to go potty.
If we allow your pup to eat randomly throughout the day your pups will go “potty” randomly throughout the day.
Once your pup is on a feeding schedule creating a potty schedule becomes a walk in the park!
3.Create a Potty Schedule
The next phase is ensuring that your pup gets a consistent outlet to go potty in the location you do want.
In the very beginning the more opportunities you give your dog to go “potty” the fewer chances your pup will have an accident at home.
4.Stay Consistent
Consistency is the number factor that determines how fast your pup becomes “potty trained”
If you want your pup to be consistent and reliable when it comes to going “potty” YOU as your pup’s owner have to be consistent when it comes to potty training in the first place.
Dogs are ultimately a reflection of us their owners. If we are inconsistent with training our dogs then our dog’s behavior will be just as inconsistent as we are.
5.Guide Don’t Punish
If this is your pup’s first time learning where to go potty and where not to go potty, then we want to avoid punishing your pup for mistakes early on.
If you punish your pup, early on your dog will just learn “it’s not safe to go potty when you’re around”.
Also, be sure not to punish your pup for an accident you discovered hours later. Dogs can’t make associations between something that they did at 9 AM and a punishment that occurs at 9:30 AM.
Dogs live in the moment, not the past.
Instead of physically punishing your pup, you want to catch your pup in the act of having an accident.
When you physically catch your dog in the act of having a “potty” accident you want to say “no” and immediately bring your pup to the correct location you want him or her to go “potty”.
6.Reward, Reward, Reward
Rewards play a major role in communicating to a dog or puppy that they did something correctly.
Remember dogs don’t speak our language, so we must capture the moments when your pup makes good decisions so that in the future your dog will continue to perform behaviors you want like going potty in the correct location.
You can also focus on creating a communication system with your dog so that you can effectively communicate with him what he or she did right, wrong and what you want your pup to continue doing.
To learn more about our communication system check out our 5 core principles of dog training or learn it step by step with the A-Z of how to train your dog.
7.Keep A Tracker
The best way to begin fine-tuning the times that your pup has to go potty is to keep a tracker and write down all the times your dog goes “potty”
Pretty soon, you’ll realize that your pup has to go “potty” at 2 or 3 specific times throughout the day making your life and your dog’s life 100x easier
Conclusion
Potty training comes down to consistency, and essentially following the tips for dog potty training above so that you set your dog up to be successful and not fail!
To awaken your dog’s true potential contact us here or Give us a call!
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