Dog Care & Dog Training Tips

I expect you're reading this because you have just welcomed a new member of the family into your household. Yes, a puppy! Well congratulations! First on getting such a wonderful animal and friend, and secondly as it's a puppy it's going to be simple to get your new companion trained.

Puppies are relatively easy to train. They are like empty vessels waiting to be filled. And you are the person to do the filling. If you don't they could pick up bad habits from the environment and from other dogs. You are the best teacher for them.

Some ground rules first though.

Never punish your puppy if they make a mistake.

Always praise when things go well.

I've developed an easy strategy and process for getting your puppy toilet trained in a short period of time. And it works! I've used this on my own chocolate Labrador Retriever puppy called Charlie. He was toilet trained within 14 days.

Some might say "14 days? That's a long time." But in reality it's not. We have to make sure we get it right as what we lay down now will keep your puppy in good stead for the rest of their life. Charlie never makes mistakes with toileting now.

What we'll look at is defining areas, regular feeding, regular toilet breaks and spotting the signs.

OK, let's start.

First, establish and define areas where your puppy can relieve themselves.

What this means is that you encourage them to go in certain areas and discourage them from other areas. Your puppy will find places that they are comfortable in going. Keep an eye on where they go and choose a suitable area. When the puppy goes clean up immediately and then lay some newspaper or magazines down there. Next time your puppy is likely to visit the same place. The newspapers will need changing every time they visit this area. And don't forget to praise them when they do their business on the papers.

If they soil somewhere they shouldn't then make sure you clean up straight away with a cleaner that will mask or remove any odours. If necessary reinforce the area with what your puppy recognises as good things. For example our puppy started to soil his bed. So we switched feeding from the kitchen to his bed area. He associated that area with something nice - food, and stopped soiling there almost immediately.

Second, establish a feeding routine.

If you're doing 3 or 4 meals a day then make sure they are always at the same time and always send your puppy out to the garden immediately after feeding. Puppies' bowels are stimulated when they feed so don't delay on this. Also start to use words or phrases that your puppy will associate with toileting. Phrases such as 'go do business' or 'busy'.

Thirdly make sure that your puppy is taken to the garden regularly.

During the day we took Charlie out to the garden every two hours. This is a good time to reinforce the phrases related to toileting.

Fourthly look for the signs that they need the toilet.

With all this training we soon noticed our puppy would start to communicate his need to go to the toilet by sitting by the door and howling. Look out for other signs such as restlessness and barking.

Hopefully this article will give you some good pointers for getting your puppy toilet trained.