Puppy Potty Training–Teaching Your Puppy to Go On Command
by Evan Davis, Admin
Filed under Dog Behavior, Dog Training
Believe it or not, you can train your puppy to “go” on command.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a housebroken puppy has been thoroughly toilet trained. Toilet training should not end with housebreaking. If you want to avoid the unpleasant but necessary task of picking up after your pet in the street, it makes sense to train him to go before you leave home. This is not as difficult as it may seem but requires a fair amount of patience in the early stages.
If you have been successfully working at the housebreaking process, you will, by the time you are able to take your puppy out, have a particular phrase that your puppy will associate with going to the toilet. When your puppy hasn’t been outside for a long period of time, it is a fairly safe bet that when you let it out, it will need to go. This is predictable. Use this to your benefit. Give you puppy your command (such as “go pee”), and then praise lavishly when he follows suit.
You should also have a fairly regular routine and will have some idea of when your puppy needs to go. Try to arrange your first walk to coincide with this time. Go out to the yard as usual, repeating your chosen phrase until your puppy does what is required. Praise enthusiastically and then take him out for a walk. If he does not go to the toilet, take him back inside for a while and try again later.
If you take your dog out for a walk only after he has been to the toilet, he will eventually begin to realize that producing the required deposit results in a walk.
As always, for more great information, check out Sit, Stay, Fetch right now!
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