Housebreaking The New Puppy In Your Life
By UniversityDog | September 21, 2007
One of the most annoying things about pet dogs is their habit of answering to calls of nature almost anywhere they feel like it. Your bedroom rug, the drawing room sofa, your Persian carpet; everything seems as good a place as any for your little pup to go cool his bladders on.
If you have just brought your pup home therefore, buckle up and get ready to save your upholstery and carpets by means of a simple method we call Housebreaking.
Now, here’s what housebreaking is all about. We humans tend to visit the loo when we feel like we must relieve ourselves, in one way or the other (thank god for that!). However, our pooches don’t have mother potty training them at the age of 1, telling them to take a crap at some fixed time on a shiny blue potty, and hence they tend to treat everything like a big ol’ lavatory. And that would be ok if we were dogs perhaps but most average human beings tend not to like that sort of thing. So what we have to do is potty train our doggies ourselves. And this training, to cut a long story short, is what we call ‘housebreaking’.
Now, facts first. Remember,
- No pup is able to keep himself from peeing or …well…relieving himself in some other form, till about 12 weeks of age. Your attempts at training your dog therefore must begin before this.
- Most puppies need to engage in bathroom related activities approximately 6-7 times a day
- Every time your dog seems to be following its tail rather slowly, and doing giddy rounds around a non-descriptive area put your shoes on to take it out cause it’s getting ready to relieve itself
- Take your dog out every time it has a meal because food immediately puts pressure on its colon and bladder.
The first lesson in housebreaking, ‘communicate with your dog’. Make sure you let your dog know that you don’t like him peeing all over the drawing room loud and clear. No there isn’t any need to use violence; just a loud “NO’ should do the trick. For best results catch him in the act so that he has no problem in associating the rebuke with the exact action.
Keep a keen eye on your pooch. As soon as he looks like he could do with a visit to the good old lavatory take him out. Once he relieves himself at the right place pat him to show how much you appreciate the fact that he didn’t pee all over your favorite rug. Give him a biscuit, and an appreciative nod and he’ll know.
See, dogs are like politicians, always eager to please. They will do anything to get cuddled and patted by their masters, thus it’s always easy to make them do things as per your requirements. You want him to pee outside? Show him how happy you are when he does so and he’ll do it always, you want him to crap every morning? Give him a friendly pat and he’ll bound off to be at it everyday. For your part make sure you know your dog’s habits, build your routine round his, try and find out what his usual urinating or defecating times are, is it after dinner? Before going to bed? Or right in the morning? Take him out accordingly.
Proper communication will ensure your pooch’s proper health and your peace, and of course a clean bedroom rug.
Topics: House Training |
September 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Every dog needs to be trained in the house, and the process is quite long. Just like during our childhood we never used proper toilet, even the dogs may do toilet on carpets. So, they must never be scolded.
Dog house training requires you to be extremely attentive and do a lot of work, thus making it one of the toughest techniques of dog training. You may believe that the dog will bark when he needs the toilet, but if you are not lucky enough to have such a dog, then be prepared to have an accident with the results showing all over the house! So, it is always better that you learn to read your dog’s body language.
Dog training is quite simple and requires you to follow quite a few steps. However, it is, as already said, time consuming. To start with, it is best to put a newspaper at the door, so that when you find your dog doing one of those accidents in the house, you can immediately take him there. That way your dog learns to do it on the paper the next time he needs to do, without your help.
For your house training, you need to know that when your dog wants to toilet, he would tend to get restless and start sniffing around the place. At this point you must pick up your dog and take him outside. If it is a young puppy, then you must make sure to take him out every hour, for at least once. After taking your dog out, you need to give him the command you wish to use during the training, such as “do the toilet” or “do your business”. Now, the dog must be appreciated for following your commands and thus you must give him lots of affection after he has done his work (since it is always better to wait till he is finished!). This would help in making your dog realize that the place to do it is outside, and soon you would find him asking you to take him out when he needs to do it.
There are a number of training techniques and routines that you may use to train your dog at home. You can learn them from the hundreds of books available these days. It must be borne in mind that dogs have to be taught to do toilet outside, as no dog knows it by himself. So, you must teach your dog in case you do not want accidents in your house, and do remember to clean up the mess.