House/Toilet/Potty Training Your Puppy
If you prefer a visual training please see the video below.
Introduction:
People use different terms, but toilet training means; house training, potty training, toilet training.
Toilet training a new puppy can be a challenging but is an essential aspect of pet ownership. It’s one of the first things you need to teach your puppy. Puppies don’t instinctively know where they should go to the toilet, so it’s up to you to guide them through the process.
This is sometimes where it goes wrong or becomes frustrating. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has said to me, ‘the door was open,’ or ‘he knows to go outside but he just won’t ask.’
Trust me when I say your pup doesn’t have the cognitive function to be ‘naughty’ and really doesn’t know what to do and needs your support and guidance.
Establishing a consistent routine and using lots of positive reinforcement will have your toilet training successfully sorted in no time at all.
In this article, we’ll take you step by step, how to achieve this. If you prefer a visual training, please scroll down to watch the video.
Let’s get started on house train your puppy and improving both of your lives.
**1. Start Early and Be Consistent:**
The foundation of successful toilet training lies in starting early and being consistent with your efforts. Until a couple of years ago when I got a puppy (first for over 30 years), I always said you should start on day 1. I now realise that’s a little unrealistic and pup needs time to explore and settle in, so DAY 2 should be your starting point. That doesn’t mean you can’t start taking pup out to toilet on day 1, just a little more freedom is needed for settling in.
Puppies have limited bladder control, and they don’t understand that indoors is not an appropriate place to wee and poop.
Begin the training process, as soon as you bring your puppy home but get really stuck in from Day 2.
**2. Regular trips to the garden (or wee box if you have no garden):**
Take your puppy out every hour to hour and a half, keeping in mind the following key times when your puppy is likely to need to go outside:
– After eating or drinking
– Upon waking up
– After play sessions
When you’re not there, or don’t have ‘eyes’ constantly on your pup, your pup should be in a crate or confined space.
Please see the notes for night times below. 
**3. What to do about the winter:**
It’s probably too late to tell you this now, but I always think carefully about when to get a puppy and its always March – September. Toilet training can be more challenging during the winter months, but regardless of the weather, you have to follow the same process. If it’s a winter task for you, be prepared with coats, wellies and umbrella.
**4. Prevent Accidents:**
Preventing accidents indoors is crucial to avoid pup building the wrong habits. Dogs learn by habit. Each time your puppy goes inside the house, it becomes harder to break the habit. Always supervise your puppy when they’re indoors, especially during the initial stages of training. When you can’t supervise, pop puppy in their crate.
**5. Reward on the Spot:**
Positive reinforcement is the best way forward for training your puppy. When your puppy goes to the toilet outside, praise them, lots of fuss, give a small, tasty treat. (If you’re hand feeding, just their food will do). For many dogs your enthusiasm will be the real key but tasty food will help.
We work to a 2 second rule. When pup does something good, the reward needs to be within 2 seconds. You need to be on the spot, ready, as soon as pup has finished to praise, praise, praise. If you leave it until pup comes back in, pup will think they’re being rewarded for coming in (which is no bad thing, but not the point).
You can throw in a command as pup starts to wee or poop, so you have this useful command for later in their life.
**6. Be Patient:**
House training takes time, and accidents are inevitable, especially in the beginning. Don’t get frustrated, be patient follow the process and things will improve rapidly. If you follow this process, within a few days you should be having very few accidents.
**7. Crate Training:**
If your pup isn’t crate trained, I suggest this is one of the first things you should do. (Crate training information can be found using this link). If pup has come from a responsible breeder, mum will have taught pup not to toilet in their bed. If you take puppy out at one of the regular times and pup doesn’t go, then bring puppy in and put them in their crate. Fill their crate with bedding so there is no toilet area (daytime only).
Take pup back out in 5 – 10 minutes and repeat this process until pup goes outside.
This way you are preventing any opportunity for pup to toilet in the house.
**8. Reducing the Garden Visits:**
As your puppy grows, you will be able to reduce the number of times you take pup in the garden. Stretching the time between. Pup will become more reliable at not weeing in the home so you will be able to allow more freedom.
It’s always a good idea to keep puppy in a crate when unsupervised. This not only avoids toilet accidents but prevents chewing of things not appropriate.
Over time, your puppy will fully understand the need to toilet outside and they will start to ask when they need to go out.
**9. Accidents: Learning Opportunities, Not Setbacks:**
Accidents will occur, even with the most diligent efforts. Instead of viewing these accidents as setbacks, take them as a learning opportunity. Reflect on what might have triggered the accident—did you miss a garden toilet trip? Was your puppy showing signs of needing to go out and you missed it?
**10. It’s not Working?:**
If you find that house training is particularly challenging or if your puppy is toileting on bedding, you should consult your vet and get puppy examined. Try to take a sample along with you.
If the vet has given puppy the all clear and you’re still struggling, maybe it’s time to seek some professional help from a local dog trainer.
It’s a good idea to keep a diary sheet too. Especially if there are more than one of you in the home caring for pup. You can download a diary sheet on this link here.
Night time Process or When Left Home Alone:
If you’re not at home because you have to go out or go to work, leave pup in a crate that is big enough to pop in a toilet area. A good option for a toilet area is a box of some kind so it protects their bed. The box can be filled with turf or artificial turf with some sand underneath.
Puppy pads are likely to get chewed. Please see my article on puppy pads. Make sure whatever you leave for toileting is not toxic of harmful if chewed or swallowed by pup.
At night, you have two choices. Either you provide a toilet area for overnight or you have to get up to take pup out. Both methods work well. If you do get up you need to do the process with no real attention to pup (apart from praise for the toilet business). Out of crate, in garden for toilet, back to bed. No fuss.
If you choose not to get up (which is my preference) you need to be prepared for a short night for a few weeks. Going to bed say 11ish and getting up 5ish. (This gets much better within a couple of weeks). Again, the time of year can impact this. Dogs respond to dark and light. One of the disadvantages to doing this in the summer is the light mornings, so you might want to cover the crate at night.
Conclusion:
Toilet/potty training your puppy requires patience, consistency, and positive reinforcement. By establishing a clear routine, preventing accidents, and using a crate (or confined space), you’ll be well on your way. Remember that building good habits takes time, but with the correct process, your puppy will soon learn to go outside.
This information is also available as a short step by step FREE video course. You can find that using the link below.
