You always hear pet parents complaining: their dogs are great in every way, except that they just can’t stop urinating and defecating wherever they please—truly a headache. If you want to train your dog to potty in a designated spot and become a “well-behaved pup,” you absolutely can’t miss Dr. E’s lesson today!
Fence training method
The fence-training method is suitable for small dogs or medium- and large-breed puppies under 12 weeks of age.
1 Preparations: Narrow the scope of activities
For a dog that’s just come home, if you want to potty-train it, the first step is to limit its daily range of movement. Because the entire house is too large a space for a dog, it’s hard for them to quickly locate the designated potty area, so they often end up eliminating anywhere in the home. To help your dog quickly learn where to go to the bathroom and eliminate in a designated spot, it’s essential to limit their roaming area.
To limit your dog’s range of movement, you can use a fence to create a designated area. Within this fenced space, set up three distinct zones: a resting area (with a crate, dog bed, and toys), a feeding area (with food and water bowls), and a potty area (with pee pads or a dog toilet). Make sure these zones don’t overlap and are kept at a reasonable distance from one another.
2 Start Training Mode
Once the preparations are complete, you can begin training mode. For detailed steps, please refer to the table below:
Newspaper Training Method
The newspaper training method is suitable for dogs of all ages; in particular, it’s ideal for older or larger dogs whose movements cannot be contained by a pen, making newspaper training the more appropriate choice.
1 Preparations: Choose an appropriate location
Choose the spot where you want your dog to go to the bathroom and cover it completely with newspaper. At first, spread the newspaper over a larger area to help your dog associate “newspaper = where to go to the bathroom.”
2 Start Training Mode
Next, let’s begin training mode. Pet parents can follow the steps in the table below:
Precautions during training
To achieve better training results, pet owners should also keep the following points in mind during training:
1 Do not urge the dog to defecate
Dogs only excrete when they are relaxed, so it is unreliable to put the dog in the toilet to force TA to defecate, or to watch TA constantly urge TA to defecate. At this time, the language and actions of the shoveling officer will make the dog lose concentration and think you want to play with TA.
2 Appropriate use of inducers
It is the nature of dogs to cover their urine on the place where other dogs urinate, leaving a message, and inducers use this principle. Most of the inducers are synthetic dog urine components that mimic urine to emit pheromones. For puppies early training fixed-point defecation is still very helpful.
3 Do not punish the dog.
If the dog has not learned to defecate correctly and accidentally pulls it out of the "toilet" range, the shoveling officer should also patiently continue to train the dog and cannot punish the dog. If the dog is beaten and scolded, the dog will associate the terrible experience with poop, and it will be more difficult to cultivate the habit of fixed-point defecation.
4 Keep away from the dog and pick up the stool again
After the dog excretes, the shoveling officer should first carry the dog outside the fence and then clean up the poo in the fence. Don't pick up the dog's excrement directly while the dog is still in the fence, because it will make the dog think you are playing with TA and make a mess of the cage!
