House Training and Housebreaking a Dog

Getting a new dog is always an exciting and happy moment, but that excitement you felt at the beginning might start to disappear when your dog pees inside the house for a few times and you have to start thinking about house training. Lear at Pug that house training or housebreaking is not as hard as people usually claim it is, but it is important to have lots of patience.

Pug teaches that the best way to speed the housebreaking puppy training process is starting as soon as your dog gets home. With both puppies and adult dogs, when you get home for the first time, take him to your yard or to the place where he’s supposed to relieve himself. This way, he’ll get familiar with that specific area. Puppies don’t have the ability to “hold it” for the first three months, so it’s important to be constantly taking him to his relief area.

During the housebreaking process, take your puppy outside immediately after you wake up. During the day, you need to take him outside right after he eats and make sure he actually does what he needs. Finally, before bedtime, take him outside so he has a last chance of relieving before he sleeps. Try to keep to this house training schedule, as sticking to a routine helps housebreaking. Overall, a puppy should be taken outside every two hours, which is how long his body can “hold it” at his age. Adult dogs, on the other hand, should be taken outside every three or four hours.

If you’re house training an adult dog, unless it’s really friendly, instead of carrying him outside (as you would with a puppy), just put on a dog collar, leash and take him outside. While older dogs have more control over their bodily functions, the new house might get him confused, since he doesn’t know the new place, so Pug recommends to have patience during house training.

During house training, there are always going to be a couple of accidents. When this happens, it’s important to remember that dogs are not able to able to connect between something they did a few minutes ago and your angry reaction, so hitting him with a newspaper, yelling at him or anything of the sort is not only cruel for him but also completely pointless. The best way of dealing with accidents is catching your dog right in the act: quickly lift him and take him outside and forcefully (not yelling) telling him: “No! You don’t go in the house!” Once outside, wait for him to finish and then praise him. Dogs respond to this sort of treatment, so he’ll remember how good it felt when he did his things out and you were pleased.

Regardless of what people might say, time and patience are the best combination to achieve a successful house training.