Episode #196 Potty Training Your Puppy to Your Entire Home

Unlock the secrets to a well-behaved pup with our Puppy Training Podcast! I'm your guide, Amy Jensen, and in this episode, you'll learn how to transform your home into a paradise of puppy success by mastering the art of potty training. We'll explore essential strategies to ensure your furry friend knows that potty time is outdoor time. From using crates, playpens, and baby gates to limit your puppy's space and minimize mishaps, to creating a reliable indoor potty zone for apartment dwellers, we'll cover it all. Your puppy will soon be signaling their need to go outside, paving the way for a successful house training journey. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Puppy Potty Training Guide
• 8:20 Successful House Training Journey

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 196, potty training your puppy to your entire home. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning, as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the Puppy Training Podcast, and I'm your host, amy Jensen. Hello you guys, thanks for listening to the puppy training podcast. Today we are talking about potty training, house training, whatever you want to call it, but I'm going to take you through the process of it and look at the entire picture, because it's one thing to train our puppy to not potty in their crate or their exercise pen and another to trust them in our entire home. So let's dive into it. When we talk about house training or potty training a puppy, we are talking about spaces helping the puppy identify this room as my space, uh, whereas this other room over here might not yet be your puppy's space or what they consider their space, so they don't really think in terms of inside, outside, necessarily like we would want them to, uh, but we definitely train them. Okay, outside is where I want you to go, inside is where I don't want you to go, but we start with spaces. So to effectively potty train a puppy, it's a really important step in number one, just fostering a good relationship between you and your dog. We find that more puppies stay in loving homes when the potty training goes well. If the house training is difficult or they're struggling or there's lots of accidents and we're not making progress with house training, we find that's when, more often than not, the puppies and the people are not getting along and maybe they don't live so well together, which is not what we want. The whole idea of getting a dog is that we want to be able to live with this puppy and this dog in our home and that we get along and that we have a good relationship and that stress levels are low. Right, so that's what we're here for. We're here to help coach you through the hard things, and potty training can be one of those hard things. It doesn't have to be and it's not always, but it depends on, oftentimes, a lot of factors the size of your home, how many people are living there, maybe the chaos factor, Okay, uh, also the breed of your puppy, the size of your puppy. There's so many variables, but we're going to make it simple today, so let's just get into it Again. That well-trained dog only makes life easier for you, right? It makes life better. It enhances the qualities of your dog's life and your life, and that's what we're going for. So we're going to start out small.

Speaker 1: 2:34

The importance of limiting space. Now, the journey of potty training begins by keeping our puppy's living space small. Right, we want them to own that space and then, as they own that space, we start to increase the space. This strategy is designed to set our puppy up for success. You'll hear me say that a lot in our programs and classes and courses and all the time I'm always saying set your dog up for success. Right, we want to minimize the chances they have of having accidents. So we're going to utilize tools such as crates, play pens, baby gates, leashes anything we can use to confine our puppy to specific areas of our home.

Speaker 1: 3:12

By limiting our dog's space, we can closely monitor their behavior and recognize signs that they need to go outside. If we don't monitor them or we're not paying attention, we could easily miss their signals. They could easily run off to the corner pee and we have no idea. So what I like to teach people is to begin the training in a single room, such as the kitchen, or pick a place that's easy to clean up, like tile floors. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Observe your puppy's habits. Take them outside frequently, especially after they eat or drink, when they first wake up from a nap or they're done with playtime. So anytime there's a transition is what I like to say, just anytime your puppy's transitioning from one activity to the next, take them outside. By doing so, we are instilling this idea that going potty is an outside activity. Now I'm speaking today to people who have an outside space. If you don't let's say you live in an apartment you're going to handle this very much the same way. Only, instead of every time I say take the puppy outside, your outside will simply be an exercise pen, that is the puppy's potty area, or you could use a small bathroom, you could use a balcony or a deck. So when you hear me say take your puppy outside, it really just means take your puppy to the potty area, which might look differently for you if you live in an apartment. So the first week that your puppy comes home, you will be doing a lot of potty trips, but they will be spending most of their time in their crate, in their playpen or supervised on leash in another area of your home, with you watching them very closely, or we're outside, and those are really the only options.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Now, the more time your puppy spends in their crate and in their playpen, they start to identify those spaces as theirs, their living space, and they want to keep it clean. As your puppy's keeping those spaces clean, then we can introduce the next space of our home. So I always add in just the area where we mostly train and play. Next, that's going to be their next space where they get more and more free time as they're able to keep that space clean. If they can keep that space clean for an entire week with no accidents and you're starting to see signs that they go sit by the door or the gate or the exit, whatever it may be that they're letting you know, hey, I got to go, I need to get out of this space because I want to keep this space clean Then you take them successfully out to their potty area and they go. You're ready to open up the next space of your home. Gradually, over time, we introduce one extra or additional room until the entire house has been introduced to your puppy and they are keeping the whole house clean Now, every time we introduce a new space, before you introduce a new space, take your puppy outside first, to reinforce the idea that potty time is exclusively outside, or in the pen, if you live in an apartment.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Now, afterward, engage in a play session. Make it a party. Throw a party that they went where you wanted them to go. That's awesome. We want to be able to watch them go, mark yes and reward them for going. Remember to introduce rooms one at a time. We always want to ensure that our dogs have a positive experience associated with each new space. Now, it's not uncommon for people to wait until their puppy reaches six months of age to introduce multiple rooms. That's 100% okay. It's also not uncommon to always be there to supervise your puppy and only leave them alone once they've hit the year mark, or even the adult mark, maybe two years.

Speaker 1: 6:26

It depends on the size of your home and how long that's going to take your puppy to identify the entire space as their living space. So don't rush it. Don't feel like you're in competition with anyone else as to how fast you accomplish this task. It's more about the small, consistent, daily efforts that you're making that will lead to faster progress. So you are observing your puppy in these new spaces. You notice they're sniffing, they're circling, they're giving you signs that they need to go. Hey, puppy, you need to go outside, let's go. You help them find the exit, you go out with them, you mark yes when they go and you pay them for going. As far as signals go, some puppies create their own. They might come to you and tap your leg. They might sit at the door and bark.

Speaker 1: 7:09

I like to hang jingle bells on the side of my door where the dogs can go, bump it with their nose and when I hear the bells, oh, you need to go outside. Over time the puppy starts to associate I ring the bells, the door opens. I ring the bells, the door opens. I ring the bells, the door opens. We go outside. I ring the bells, the door opens. I ring the bells, the door opens. I ring the bells, the door opens. We go outside. I ring the bells, the door opens. I go outside. I go potty. Oh, ringing those bells means I need to go potty and they'll start to use those to communicate to you that they need to go.

Speaker 1: 7:33

There's a lot of different methods we can use. Again, your dog can come to you and sit. Your dog can come to you and bump your leg. Your dog could sit at the door and bark. There's lots of options. Pick or identify something that works for your family and then show your dog what you want them to do before you open that door and they go out to the bathroom and they'll start to figure out the patterns.

Speaker 1: 7:52

Dogs love patterns. They learn really well through patterns and, over time, that consistency of whatever that behavior is you're wanting them to signal you with, they'll start to figure out. Oh, that's how I tell them I need to go to the bathroom. So be patient. It takes time. Yes, there's going to be accidents. Clean them up thoroughly, use an enzyme cleaner to get rid of the entire smell. We don't want any lingering odor there attracting your dog back to that spot and then use management.

Speaker 1: 8:20

So we have the crates, the pens, the leashes. We're observing our puppy in each new room that we introduce. Somebody's there to supervise and then we're watching for signs that they need to go and we're helping them be successful and over time they learn that pattern and pretty soon your puppy will be house trained to your entire home. It's a journey well worth taking. Yes, it requires effort, patience, consistency, all the good things you know, hard work, but you can do it and then, from then on, you can trust your dog and that trust is huge towards living a life together that you really enjoy. All right, you guys. Thanks for listening. If you need more help with house training, we have an entire house training class and a first week together program inside our membership that can walk you through exactly what to do with your new dog. We'd love to help you out. Have a great week and happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site, baxter and Bellacom, to contact me.