Housebreaking Puppy

Dog housebreaking or puppy housebreaking is training given to pets on how to control their bladder and bowel movements, and how to eliminate in a designated location either within the house or outdoors.

Training a pup can start as early as possible, but in general, you can expect some results by the age of 14 weeks and above.



This is because a puppy younger than 14 weeks will not be able to physically control its bladder and bowel movements, and will not be able to respond to your training. However it is thought that if training begins early, a pup would have already learnt what you expect from him, and will thus later be able to easily put into practice what was taught.

Firstly, before training one must follow the rule of reward and punishment. When the pup does something right, one must offer rewards and praise to reinforce the action.



However, do not punish the dog if you have not seen him doing something wrong. Undesirable actions should ideally be ignored, or if possible and necessary, corrected by guiding the dog in the right direction. Punishment is used only in the rarest cases, and is completely unnecessary and counter-productive in the area of housebreaking.





One can start house breaking in the home itself. Fix a designated location and place some paper there. Each time you notice signs of the puppy wanting to defecate or urinate (some of the signs would be moving in circles or sniffing around), you should gently take her to the paper, wait till she relieves herself, and then praise her for it. When the dog starts regularly using the paper, you can shift the paper to another area, maybe outdoors. The only disadvantage of this method is that the dog initially learns to eliminate only within the house, and it could therefore take a longer time to house break.

Another effective and popular method is crate training puppies. Here the dog is put in a crate, which is a rectangular cage that is made of metal, wood or plastic. The idea behind this method is that dogs do not like to soil the place they sleep in. Hence they learn to control their bladder and bowel movements for a longer time. This is one of the main advantages of crate training, whereby the puppies learn better control and therefore make fewer mistakes later on. Of course, you should remember that getting a pup used to a crate will not magically give it the ability to control its bladder and bowels. This will be a learning process, and it is essential that you help this process by frequently taking the pup outside and watching for signs that the pup needs to go.

In fact, with constant watching no paper or crate may need to be used. Here the master keeps an agile eye on the dog for any kind of signs that the dog wants to eliminate and immediately leads him to the desired area. It is crucial that the dog is watched all the time so that no mistake occurs.