In This Chapter
- Opting for indoor training
- Choosing an indoor potty
- Positioning the indoor potty
- Teaching puppies versus teaching adult dogs
Indoor housetraining can benefit both people and pooches.
The dog who potties inside need never worry about having to do his business
outside in the rain, snow, and darkness. Indoor training can also save your
floors and furnishings if your dog can’t potty outdoors due to health reasons,
your schedule, or your pup’s tiny bladder.
In this chapter, I explain why indoor training can solve
many pooches’ potty problems, and I describe how to teach your canine companion
to use an indoor potty.
Understanding How Indoor Training Works
Indoor training is
the process of teaching your dog to poop and pee only in the indoor potty that
you’ve created for him. Indoor training involves using scent and repetition to
teach your dog that the indoor potty is the only surface upon which he should
take a whiz or make a deposit. A successfully indoor-trained pooch is one who, upon
feeling the urge to eliminate, high-tails himself to his indoor potty. When
he’s there, he does his business. Afterward, you clean the potty area.
Crates and the indoor trainee |
|
If you’re planning to indoor-train your puppy, does he
really need a crate? Maybe not, but using one is still a good idea. Every dog has an instinctive need for a safe, enclosed
place from which to view the world: a den. A crate gives your dog that secure
vantage point. Moreover, you probably don’t want your dog to be traipsing to
the papers or litter box at any and all hours. By teaching him to stay in his
crate for at least fairly short intervals, you’re helping him develop the
control he needs to put a temporary hold on his deposits. |
Of course, the devil is in the details, but take heart: You
and your dog can master those details quickly and make indoor training a breeze.
In this section, I help you recognize whether your dog is a good candidate for
indoor training, and I discuss the importance of not confusing your dog with
both indoor and outdoor potty places.
Identifying good indoor-training candidates
Picture this: A 2-year-old miniature Dachshund who was once
a housetraining whiz suddenly appears to develop housetraining amnesia. He’s
always held his poop and pee all day, but when his owner starts working longer
hours, his bathroom manners backslide, resulting in puddles all over his home.
The owner, who’s understandably frustrated at having to spend her evenings
cleaning her carpet, wonders whether her dog needs a new way to go to the
bathroom — and if so, whether indoor training would fill the bill. The answer
to that question may be yes.
Remember
Dealing with housetraining lapses should start with a trip to your vet. If your outdoor-trained dog suddenly starts making bathroom mistakes, have his vet examine him for possible medical problems (Chapter Understanding How an Oh-No Can Become a Problem-o outlines some of these problems and how to solve them.) But if your dog gets the all-clear from his doctor, switching to indoor training may be a good idea so that he can potty indoors whenever he needs to.
The following dogs may do better with indoor potties than
with outdoor bathrooms:
- Dogs who are home alone all day, especially puppies: If you’re away from home all day, moving the canine potty indoors may be a big improvement from cleaning up a puddle when you come home. A puppy who’s less than 4 or 5 months old can’t hold it very long.
- Pooches whose people have trouble walking: For a senior citizen who can’t get around easily, an indoor potty may make the difference between being able to have a dog and having to live without canine company.
- Dogs who live in city apartments and can’t get to an outdoor potty area easily: For the high-rise apartment dweller, having an inside place for the dog to do his business can be far better than making a mad dash for the elevator to get Fido outside in time. However, this condition should apply to small dogs only.
- Very small dogs: For anyone with a reasonably small dog, indoor training eliminates the need to brave bad weather to take the dog to do the doo.
- Puppies who can’t use a public bathroom because they haven’t finished their shots: The bodily waste and vomit that other dogs leave behind can transmit devastating diseases such as canine distemper and parvovirus. So if your puppy hasn’t been fully vaccinated — at about 16 weeks of age — and your dog has nowhere to go outside but a public park or similar area that other dogs visit, your pup may need to use an indoor potty, at least temporarily. (Note: If you have your own fenced backyard, letting him do his business outdoors is fine as long as you’re reasonably sure that unvaccinated dogs haven’t done their business there.)
Opting for indoor training only
You can train an outdoor-trained dog to use an indoor potty,
and you can train an indoor-trained dog to do the doo outside. (For details,
see the later sections “Switching a vaccinated puppy to outdoor training” and
“Using Indoor Training for the Adult Dog.”) But your dog shouldn’t use both
types of potty places on a regular basis. After you switch your dog’s potty
spot, close the old one.
Remember
You have to decide whether you want your dog to do his business inside or outside — and train him accordingly. It would be nice to be able to take your dog to an outdoor potty on sunny days but have the option of spreading out some newspapers when the weather’s lousy or you feel like sleeping late. Unfortunately, though, this convenience for you just confuses your dog — and a dog who’s confused about bathroom protocol is anything but convenient.
If your ultimate goal is to have your dog relieve himself
outside, focus on outdoor training from the start. You can cover the puppy’s
indoor living area with papers to protect your floors (as I explain later in
“Newspapers”) if you’ll be away from home for several hours and can’t arrange
for Fido to have a potty break. But don’t pre-scent the papers with urine or
praise the dog for doing the doo inside, as you would if you were specifically
practicing indoor training. In this case, the newspapers are strictly a
stop-gap measure until the puppy has the physical ability to hold it all day. See
Chapter Sorting
Out Humans’ Housetraining Challenges for details on this technique.
Pick Your Potty: Deciding Which Type to Use
First, you need to decide which type of indoor potty to use:
newspapers, puppy training pads, a litter box, or a grate/tray pooch potty. In
this section, I describe your options and help you choose the one that may work
best for you and your canine companion.
Tip
If you have a tiny dog, you may eventually want to put a potty on each floor of your home so she can reach the bathroom in time (see Chapter Accident-Proofing Small Dogs and Other Problem Potty-ers for tips on working with petite pooches). Start with just one potty in the beginning for a puppy or adult housetrainee, because your dog will be confined much of the time. After housetraining is complete, you can add more doggie bathrooms.
Newspapers
Many people consider newspapers to be a temporary measure; they
use the newspapers as a stop-gap doggie bathroom until the dog is ready to
start doing her business outside on a full-time basis. That said, there’s no
reason newspapers can’t be a permanent indoor potty for your pooch.
Newspapers are the original indoor pooch potties. And no
wonder: They’re cheap, they’re readily available, and they can even be considered
environmentally friendly: You buy one, you read it, and you reuse it as an
indoor doggie bathroom. What could be simpler?
The drawbacks of papers are apparent the first time you
clean up the poop or pee your dog places on that newspaper. Unless you pick up
that paper with care, the pee may drip down onto the floor — or even (yuck)
onto your person. There’s also the not-so-attractive possibility that your dog
will walk through her previous puddle or pile on subsequent trips to her
newspaper potty if you don’t clean up the mess right away. Still, for the cost-conscious,
no-nonsense housetrainer who wants his pooch to perform her bathroom maneuvers
indoors, newspapers can work.
Using newspapers is not just a matter of pulling out a
sheet, throwing it on the floor, and letting your housetrainee figure out the
rest. Here’s how to construct a proper indoor bathroom:
Tip
- Protect your floor. Place an old shower curtain on the floor before you place any newspapers on it. The curtain protects your floor if the urine soaks through the papers. In that case, you only have to apply pet stain cleaner to the wet area of the curtain and wipe it dry.
- Start big. When you first lay out newspapers for your house- trainee, plan on covering an area equal to the size of at least four spread-out pages, one next to the other, if not nearly the dog’s entire living area. That gives your pooch plenty of area upon which to potty when she’s first figuring out where she’s supposed to do her business.
- Layer up. Plan on using eight full-page spreads for your beginning housetrainee’s newspaper bathroom area. Put four of those spreads together; then place the other four spreads next to the first set of spreads.
- Shrink later. As your dog becomes more proficient at using the papers, you can cut back on the number of papers used to just one four-layer set of two-page spreads.
- Use the right newspaper. Stick with newspapers that sport black print and occasional front page color photos. They’re more absorbent than other surfaces, such as the Sunday ad inserts, and they provide more traction.
Tip
Don’t fret if the ink from the newspaper rubs off on your light-coated puppy’s paws. A little dab of soap and water can whisk those smudges away.
Puppy training pads
Puppy training pads, also known as pee pads or pee-pee pads,
are marketed as an alternative to newspapers or litter boxes for dogs who are
learning to potty indoors. The pads are made of absorbent layers of paper that
are backed by a layer of plastic and are sealed around the edges. The standard
size of each pad is 23 x 24 inches, although at least one manufacturer also
offers an “oversize” pad of 30 x 30 inches. The pads come in packages usually
ranging from 12 to 60 pads each.
Because the pads are absorbent, a puddle is less likely to
soak through the floor than is the case with layers of newspaper, and cleanup
is easier, too. However, I’m not a big fan of training pads.
Warning!
All too often, dogs decide they’d rather eat puppy training pads than potty on them. At best, such ingestion results in a double mess on the floor: canine waste and shredded pads. At worst, a dog who eats his training pad may need emergency surgery to remove an ingested part of a pad that’s blocked the digestive tract.
Litter boxes
Up until about a decade ago, newspapers were the main source
of indoor potties for pooches. Then a couple of forward-thinking companies
apparently realized that if cats could potty in aesthetically pleasing,
easy-to-clean facilities, so could dogs. VoilÃ
— the doggie litter box was born.
Litter boxes can offer other advantages: Unlike newspapers,
they control pet waste odors and protect your floor without your having to
sacrifice a shower curtain to the cause.
If you want to use a doggie litter box for training, you
need the following items:
- A litter box (also called a litter tray or litter pan), similar to what cats and kittens use to go to the bathroom: The boxes have walls on three sides, and the fourth side is open to allow easy entry. One company, Nestlé-Purina, offers three litter box sizes: one for puppies and toy dogs, one for miniature-sized dogs, and one for standard-sized dogs that weigh up to 35 pounds.
- The litter itself: The main ingredients of dog litter are recycled paper and/or wood pulp. Costs vary depending on how large your dog is and what size of bag you purchase. You can also get dog litter delivered to your home if you order online or from a catalog.
Grate/tray potties
If you don’t want to deal with the messiness of newspapers
(including the chance that your dog will walk through the pee or poop deposited
on those papers) or to add periodic purchases of dog litter to your pet care
budget, you have yet another option: the grate/tray combo. These relatively new
pooch potties come in two parts: an easy-to-clean plastic tray and a plastic
grate that you place atop the tray. You don’t need to buy anything else.
Avoiding kitty litter |
|
If you have both a dog and a cat, you may be thinking
about streamlining your shopping by purchasing the same litter for both. But
according to litter manufacturers, that’s not a very good idea. For one thing, many dogs are as likely to try eating kitty
litter as they are to eliminate in it. Such behavior can pose problems not
only for your canine companion but also for your feline friend. Moreover, kitty litter isn’t designed to absorb doggie
waste. Many cat litters, particularly the clumping kind, are sandlike in
texture. Cats like to cover their solid waste, and the sandlike litter makes
that cover-up action easier. Dogs don’t cover their tracks — or their poop,
either — but some canines do scuff and scrape the areas behind them with
their rear feet after they’ve made a solid waste deposit. A dog who likes to
do this would end up kicking a fair amount of kitty litter out of the box.
Dog litters, which are made from recycled paper and/or wood pulp, are much more
likely to withstand a dog’s rear-guard action. These differences in feline and canine behavior also mean
that household dogs and cats need to have separate litter boxes. If you
expect Fido to potty in the same box that Fluffy does — or vice versa — it’s
likely that both Fido and Fluffy will choose to do their business elsewhere. |
And fear not: Because the grates are made of flexible
plastic, they give under the weight of the dog’s paws, preventing any discomfort.
When I tested one of these combos with my 70-pound dog Allie, she didn’t
hesitate to venture onto the tray or to sit on it when asked.
But although grate/tray potties are just as nice looking as
litter boxes, they can be cumbersome to clean up, depending on their size. That
clumsiness of cleanup is also a reason not to use these potties for dogs who
weigh more than 30 pounds.
Introducing Puppies to Indoor Training
The great thing about outdoor training is that you can start
doing it right away. And if you’re really lucky, your puppy’s breeder has started
the process for you. In this section, you find out how to show your dog his
potty spot, how to encourage your dog with verbal cues, and how to develop a pup-sized
training schedule.
Sod potties: Bringing the yard indoors |
|
For apartment dwellers who still want their dogs to have
the experience of pottying on grass (or a reasonable facsimile thereof),
there’s a new solution: Sod potties. These systems consist of a drain pan on
which you place some real or faux sod. Some have their own drainage systems
and even sprinklers (whoa!), and others require the owner to rinse the grass
themselves, either by hand or with a hose. These products have a certain ingenuity, but there’s one
huge drawback: cost. The least-expensive offering in this line of product
starts at $199 — and that’s not including the synthetic grass that you have
to purchase. One top-of-the-line system that at least comes with its own
grass costs nearly $600 to start with, not counting shipping costs. My
opinion: Stick with the basics, unless you have money to burn. |
Deciding where to put the indoor potty
Chapter Getting
Your Home in Housetraining Order contains some basic pointers on where to put the
indoor potty, mainly to help you make that decision. Now that you’re tackling
the nitty-gritty of indoor training, I offer more help not only on creating
your pooch’s indoor potty but also on setting up his entire living area.
Accomplishing this task effectively can make bathroom breaks go much more
smoothly for both you and your canine companion.
Remember
Until your dog is fully housetrained, he should not have access to your entire home unless you can be right there to watch his every move. If you don’t watch what your four-legged friend is doing, you won’t see when he performs a doggie download — and you’ll miss what educators call a teachable moment: the opportunity to teach your canine companion where he should do his business.
But of course, no one can watch a dog 24/7. That’s why,
during the times you can’t cast an eagle eye on your canine companion, you should
confine him to a dog-proofed indoor living area. Start with a soft comfy bed —
ideally inside a crate — and also set up a place for him to eat and a place for
him to perform bathroom maneuvers.
Tip
When deciding where to set up your indoor trainee’s living area, bear the following factors in mind:
- Where the action is: Your dog needs more than just a place to snooze, chow down, and do his bathroom biz. He also needs that living area to be where he’s most likely to get attention from his family; in other words, where his family tends to congregate. For most households, that’s the kitchen.
- Surface stability: No matter which indoor potty you choose, placement of that potty on a carpet will render the potty less stable than placement on a bare floor. Plus, if you choose to use newspapers, a big puddle of urine or pile of loose stool could soak through those newspapers onto the carpet, necessitating a challenging cleanup even though your dog went in the right place. For that reason, placing the living area on a bare floor is preferable to placing it on a carpet or rug.
- Convenient waste disposal: You may want to place the potty in a room close to a covered trash disposal area, a sink, and a toilet. That way, you can throw solid waste down the toilet, clean the potty itself in the sink if needed, and throw litter or papers in the trash area.
- Your home décor: If you’ve decorated your home to resemble an interior spread from Architectural Digest, you want to make sure that your puppy’s part of your palace doesn’t detract from your décor.
No matter where you place the living area, make sure that
your puppy can’t get into any trouble. Install baby gates to block the doorways,
or encircle the living area with an exercise pen.
Warning!
Within the living area, remove any dangling electrical cords from the dog’s reach, and make sure he can’t get into any cabinets where you keep cleaners and other hazardous substances. Door guards, which you can find in the baby departments of toy stores, can keep your curious canine from venturing into your cabinets.
Now you’re ready to place the indoor potty in the living
area. If you’re using a litter box or grate/tray, place it in a corner away from
your puppy’s bed and dishes. If you’re using newspapers, start by covering
nearly the entire living area with four layers of newspaper. As your puppy
develops potty proficiency, gradually reduce the coverage area.
Starting out
After you’ve set up your puppy’s living area, you can start
teaching her to use the indoor potty. The first and most important step is to help
her make the connection between the potty place and what she’s supposed to do
in that place. In this section, I explain how it works.
Introducing the indoor potty
Start off right — and do it right away. The car ride home
from the breeder, shelter, or foster home often prompts a puppy to eliminate immediately
after the ride is over. So as soon as you and your pup arrive home, take her to
her indoor potty. If she hesitates to use the potty, lure her onto it or into
it with a small treat. When she opens her floodgates and/or makes a solid
deposit, praise her lavishly and give her a tiny treat. If she doesn’t do
anything, wait a few minutes and then try again.
Cleaning up the indoor potty — mostly
Clean up the potty immediately, but leave a little something
behind: a soiled newspaper or a scent cloth that you create by wiping your dog’s
bottom with a paper towel after she does the doo. Place this item just below
the top layer of fresh newspaper or underneath the litter or grate. By doing
so, you’re telling your puppy where you want her to do her business. The smell
of the soiled paper or litter is the canine equivalent of a come-hither glance.
Tip
Make sure that the puppy’s potty spot remains sanitary. Here’s how to keep it clean:
- Newspapers: Change the papers as soon as they’re soiled (except for that pre-scented piece). If urine soaks through the papers to the shower curtain underneath it, just apply your pet stain cleaner to the dampened area and wipe it clean.
- Litter box: Plan on washing out the litter box with detergent and warm water at least once a week and on freshening the litter each time your dog uses the box.
- Grate/tray indoor potty: Rinse the grate and tray daily and wash them weekly unless the manufacturer’s instructions dictate otherwise.
Taking later trips to the potty spot
After your dog has pottied and you’ve cleaned the potty, let
your puppy explore the house for a while. But keep a close eye on her for signs
that she needs to go again. If she suddenly stops, starts sniffing intently,
begins to circle or pace, and/or starts to squat, whisk her back to the potty
and praise her if she pees or poops there. Give her a tiny treat, too.
If you miss the signs that she’s going to go and she has an
accident, don’t say anything. Just clean up and watch her more closely next
time.
After an hour or so of getting to know each other, put your
puppy in her bed (or crate) and let her take a much-needed nap. Watch to see
when she wakes up, though — and when she does, get her to her potty. If she
uses it, praise and treat. Then clean up as before.
Puppies need to potty after every meal, naptime, and play
session. Each time she uses her potty, praise her lavishly.
Tip
Don’t take your puppy outside for a walk or to play until after she makes a trip to the papers, box, or grate-tray combo. You don’t want the pup to associate the outdoors with elimination. You’re aiming to have your puppy consider the indoor potty her one and only toilet.
Scheduling bathroom breaks
Even indoor-trained dogs can benefit from learning to hold
their poop and pee. The pooch with some self-control is much easier to live
with than the dog with unregulated bathroom demands. Noticing that your dog may
be ill is also easier if you can determine whether he’s going more or less
often than usual.
But regulating your dog’s bathroom behavior needn’t flummox you.
You can bring some order to your indoor trainee’s life (and your own) by
putting his trips to the potty on a schedule.
Remember
The important thing to remember when setting up a potty schedule is that puppies need to eliminate at the following times:
- First thing in the morning
- Last thing at night
- During the night (if the puppy is under 4 months of age)
- After energetic playing
- After being confined in a crate
- After a nap
- After chewing on a toy or a bone
- A few minutes after eating
Armed with this knowledge, you can create a schedule that
gives your puppy time to pee or poop and gives you some predictability. Table
7-1 shows how you can structure a schedule for a 3-month-old pup. Note,
however, that a younger puppy probably will need to go much more often — maybe
even hourly. (Note: This schedule assumes
that someone’s home during the day to take care of the puppy’s potty needs. If
that’s not the situation in your home, check out Chapter Sorting
Out Humans’ Housetraining Challenges.)
Table 7-1 - Indoor Training Schedule for a 3-Month-Old Puppy |
|
Time |
Tasks |
|
7:00 a.m. |
Take puppy to potty. Feed puppy. Offer water. Take puppy to potty. Play with puppy up to 15 minutes. Take puppy to potty. Put puppy in crate. |
|
Midmorning |
Take puppy to potty. Offer water. Play with puppy up to 15 minutes. Take puppy to potty. Put puppy in crate. |
|
Noon |
Take puppy to potty. Feed puppy. Offer water. Take puppy to potty. Play with puppy 15 to 30 minutes. Take puppy to potty. Put puppy in crate. |
|
Midafternoon |
Take puppy to potty. Offer water. Play with puppy up to 15 minutes. Take puppy to potty. Put puppy in crate. |
|
5:30 p.m. |
Take puppy to potty. Feed puppy. Offer water. Take puppy to potty. Play with puppy up to 1 hour and/or let puppy hang out
with the family in the kitchen. |
|
7:00 p.m. |
Take puppy to potty. Play with puppy up to 15 minutes. Put puppy in crate. |
|
Before bed |
Take puppy to potty. Put puppy in crate. |
|
During the night |
Take puppy to potty if necessary. |
As your puppy gets older, she won’t need the midmorning,
midafternoon, and 7:00 p.m. trips to the potty, and she won’t need the noontime
feeding, either. The nocturnal trip to the potty will soon become a thing of
the past, too.
Switching a vaccinated puppy to outdoor training
Maybe you never intended for indoor training to be a
permanent solution. If you opted for indoor training because your pup wasn’t fully
vaccinated or because she was too young to hold it for very long, you can move
the potty spot outdoors when the time is right. After the shots are finished at
around 16 weeks of age, you can keep your puppy on papers if she’s likely to be
a small adult, or you can opt to move her bathroom outside.
If you want your puppy to go outside, start by moving the
papers themselves to an outdoor area and let your puppy eliminate on them.
Gradually reduce the size of the paper until the puppy just goes to her potty
spot and does her business without paper.
Using Indoor Training for the Adult Dog
If you’ve just adopted an adult dog who’s always pottied
indoors, there’s really no training to do. Just use the same type of bathroom he
had in his previous home and continue with that. He’ll probably adjust very
smoothly with little or no effort on your part. If you don’t know what type of
indoor bathroom he had, choose what works best for you, set up a living area,
and begin indoor training. (Chapter Heading
to the Outside: Outdoor Housetraining includes a training schedule for adult
dogs.)
More often, though, indoor training an adult dog means
moving his bathroom from the outdoor backyard to a location inside your house.
In this section, I give you the scoop on making that change, regardless of what
kind of potty you’ve chosen.
Remember
As with indoor potties for puppies, you need to keep the potties for adult dogs sanitary. See the earlier section titled “Cleaning up the indoor potty — mostly” for details.
From outdoors to papers
Moving a dog’s potty from an outdoor spot to the front page
of yesterday’s newspaper is relatively easy:
1. Mark a piece of newspaper with your dog’s urine.
Start by bringing a piece of toilet tissue and a piece of newspaper along when you take Fifi outdoors to her usual potty place. Wipe her bottom with the toilet tissue after she pees. Then wipe the toilet tissue onto the newspaper.
2. Line your dog’s outdoor potty spot with newspapers.
The next time you take Fifi out, take the pre-scented newspaper and some fresh newspaper along with you. When you reach the outdoor potty area, place the pre-scented paper on the ground and the fresh papers on top of it. Then let Fifi do her business atop the papers; praise and treat when she does. Continue this routine until Fifi uses the out- door papers consistently.
3. Move the papers indoors.
Place a pre-scented newspaper beneath the top layer of fresh newspapers spread out on the floor in the potty area you’ve chosen. Make sure that the area you cover equals two or three side-by-side two-page newspaper spreads and that it’s four layers deep.
At Fifi’s next potty break, take her to the papers instead of outside. Give her a few minutes to do her business. If she does, praise lavishly; if she doesn’t, wait 15 or 20 minutes and try again.
4. When she consistently uses the indoor papers, reduce the amount of floor space the papers take up.
Patience and encouragement are the keys to making this
transition work. You’re asking your dog to make a big change after years of doing
her bathroom business outside. Dogs don’t like changes any more than most
people do, but your enthusiasm and her eagerness to please you can help her
overcome her reluctance.
From outdoors to litter box
To help a dog switch from pottying outdoors to pottying in a
litter box, start by bringing the new potty to the old potty. Here’s how the
process works:
1. Just before one of your dog’s scheduled bathroom breaks, put a little dog litter on his outdoor potty spot.
Bring him to the outdoor spot and encourage him to do his business. Praise and treat him when he does.
2. When he’s consistently using the litter-covered outdoor potty, introduce him to the litter box.
Line the box with litter and place it next to the litter- covered outdoor potty area. Encourage him to investigate the litter box and praise him lavishly when he does.
3. After your dog is used to seeing the litter box in his outdoor potty area, introduce him to the idea of doing his business inside the box.
Put some used litter or pre-scented paper in the box. When he does eliminate inside the box, praise him and give him a treat.
4. Start moving the litter box toward your house.
Do so just a short distance each day. Eventually, you’ll be able to locate the litter box inside your home — and your days and nights of taking your dog outside to potty will be history.
If your dog balks at using the litter box at any point in
this process, ease the pace of change. Make sure that he’s mastered one step in
the process before moving to the next one.
From outdoors to grate/tray combo
Here’s how to train your outdoor-trained adult dog to use a
grate/tray combo:
1. Start by having your dog go potty outside; wipe your dog’s bottom with a paper towel.
Hold onto this cloth; you’ll use it to lure her to what will be her indoor potty.
2. Sometime before the next potty break, break out the grate/tray combo indoors and use a treat to lure your dog atop the grate; keep doing this until she’s walking on the grate comfortably.
Give her a treat when she does so. Keep doing this until she’s comfortable atop the grate.
3. For her next potty break, bring the grate/tray outside, place it next to her potty spot, and put the pre-scented cloth between the grate and tray.
If she goes on the grate and tray, praise and treat her.
4. After she’s done this a few times, start moving the potty toward your home at a snail’s pace.
The grate/tray combo eventually makes its way inside.
Responding to Mistakes
Your puppy or dog undoubtedly is wonderful, but he isn’t
perfect. Inevitably, he’ll deposit a puddle or pile away from the indoor potty.
But take a deep breath. Repeat to yourself, “It’s not his fault. It’s not his
fault.” Take him to his indoor living area and say nothing. Then go get some
paper towels and pet stain remover. Clean up according to the directions on the
cleaner.
Above all, don’t scold, punish, or try to correct your dog.
He won’t connect your loud voice and angry gestures with the fact that he went
to the bathroom a mere ten minutes ago.
Remember
If your dog folds back his ears and puts his tail between his legs while you let him know how upset you are, don’t think — not for a minute — that he’s feeling guilty. He’s apprehensive, upset, maybe even fearful when you become angry, but he feels absolutely no remorse over doing what came naturally to him. So don’t waste your breath; just clean up the mess.
Then ask yourself what you could’ve done to prevent your
dog’s accident. Table 7-2 can help get you started.
Table 7-2 - Troubleshooting Fido’s Accident |
|
What Fido Did |
What You Should Do |
|
He peed when you weren’t looking. |
Don’t let him out of his living area unless you can watch
him every single second. |
|
He pooped without warning. |
Watch to see how he acts or what he does right before he
unloads. That way, you’ll be able to whisk him to his indoor potty before he
has an accident. |
|
He missed the potty. |
Leave him a bigger area of newspapers for him to eliminate
on, or get him a bigger litter box or grate/tray combo. |
|
He pees on the same spot. |
Clean up completely (see Chapter Getting
Your Home in Housetraining Order for details). |
by Susan McCullough
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