How To Potty Train A Puppy

Hi Lily here, and if you’re looking for solutions on how to potty train a puppy, then you have come to the right place, because here, you will find free useful house training advice, such as how to get your puppy to potty on cue or how to prevent your potty from eliminating in the wrong place etc, which we are sure will help you solve your puppy potty training needs.

What motivated us to create this puppy house training website?

Well, because when we had our first dog more than 15 years ago, house training it became an immediate need. Being young and fresh out of school then, we were pretty tight for cash and had wished that there free potty as well as dog training materials out there to help us first time dog owners. Unfortunately, we could not find any and thus we thought that by sharing our story, we can help others in a similar position. So here is our story…

Our Potty and Dog Training Journey (Our Story)

More than 15 years ago, we adopted a Bichon cross, Lady. Then, I was in two minds about adopting it; we have never had a dog of our own and adopting one, I felt was a heavy responsibility. I didn’t like the idea too of our new addition in the house doing its business wherever it likes simply because we knew nothing about house breaking a puppy or dog. My husband then assured me he would take care of everything and he began searching for house training solutions. I remembered we bought a video about bringing up a puppy and there was a section on toilet training puppies.  The video made toilet training puppies look so simple; simply line a confined area with newspapers all over and let the puppy pick its spot. Thereafter, remove all newspaper and replace only the soiled ones on exact the spot the puppy picked. Gradually over time, shift the newspapers on that spot closer to the corner of the room or wherever you designate as the toilet spot.

Following the video instructions, my husband lined up the confined area (one of our bathrooms) with newspapers and confined our dog there for the night. We went to bed, confidently thinking that everything would turn out as per the outcome in that video. How wrong we were; when we woke up the next morning, our bathroom area was in a total mess. Lady had spent the night partying away, shredding all the newspapers in her sight. She had eliminated too and because the newspapers were all shredded, her poo and pee were all over the bathroom floor. We had a tough time cleaning up and concluded that the method in the video simply could not work for our dog.

That same day, we made another mistake – letting Lady roam about the house unsupervised. While we were out of sight, she chewed away on my favorite shoe. It didn’t take us long to realize we had more than a potty training problem. Lady needed some dog training too, to avoid being a nuisance in the house. We considered signing up for obedience classes, but given our salaries then, we could not afford the fees. My hubby did the next best thing; he began reading up books on both house training and dog training in general. Before long, Lady was both successfully potty and obedience trained. Some of the potty training solutions presented in this site was the result of my husband’s learnings then on the method that worked best for us.

Meanwhile, even though Lady was successfully obedience trained, I had my misgivings about the training methods used then. You see, my husband had used the traditional compulsion based approach, believing falsely that dogs trained with treats will not respond to commands without treats. It broke my heart to see Lady learning to heel with leash pops and retrieve, with ear pinches. Surely there must be a better and more humane way, I thought.

And there indeed was a more gentle, dog friendly approach – clicker training. Many years later, when we had our second dog, Rufus, my husband chanced upon a pet shop that carried Morgan Spector’s landmark book, Clicker Training for Obedience, as well as Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot Your Dog. Out of curiosity, he bought these books and decided to give the clicker method a try while training Rufus. To his surprise, clicker training worked beyond his expectations and before long, Rufus earned his CDX and went on to become the Singapore Kennel Club’s 2009 Reserve Obedience Dog of the Year.

Karen and Morgan’s work are both thorough and excellent. By providing lots of useful details, they are also rather lengthy and wordy. For those who enjoy reading, they are an excellent choice which is why we recommend them at our website http://www.clickertrainingresource.com/recommended-books.html.

However, for those who do not enjoy reading and yet want to learn clicker training, a simpler read with equally good content and some training video examples might be more appealing.  I recently stumbled upon a site that offers just that – Clickertraining: The 4 Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer. Written by 2 Top Norwegian dog trainers, their program will train you to be an effective clicker trainer in a very short time.

When we had our first dog, Lady, we had lots of dog training problems. From Potty Training to obedience training, we needed help but could not afford to pay for it and had no one to turn to. We found a way out for ourselves – by reading and applying what we read. It worked for us, so we know for a fact that dog training can easily be self-taught. We therefore hope that by sharing our story, we will be able to inspire you to read up more about clicker dog training and not just potty training.  In doing so, we hope that your dog ownership journey will become much easier and fulfilling. More importantly, in finding solutions to your dog and potty training needs, you will first consider self-help rather than spending excessively large sums of money on dog school fees.

Good luck in training your dog.

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