Dr. Greenway discusses how to potty train a puppy with and without a pee pad. Other topics covered in this video include importance of praise, treats, appropriate defecation, appropriate urination, positive reinforcement and punishment.
TRANSCRIPT:
This is Dr. Clayton Greenway with healthcareforpets.com and this is Max. What I wanted to talk about was toilet training your puppy. This can be a difficult thing, it can be quite frustrating and you’ve got to have some patience. They will learn better as they age, but you want to start off on the right foot.
The first thing I’ll mention is you take the dog’s age in months and you add 1 to it and that should tell you how long they’re able to hold their bladder. That’s a general guideline. You can think about that when you’re putting them away for how long you can go away and I understand that in today’s busy world we all have jobs and that’s okay, you can leave your puppy on its own but you can set up places for it to eliminate appropriately. For that reason a lot of people use pee pads and that’s good early on but I always want to make the point that urinating on a pee pad or defecating on a pee pad is very similar to eliminating on the carpet so it’s not a very big jump going from the pee pad to the carpet. So if you’re using a pee pad you want to try to eliminate it as soon as you can.
The best thing to do is to get your puppy outside just as often as possible. They will eliminate when they need to. The more you get outside, the more chance that your puppy is going to eliminate outside. What you want to do is keep a bag of treats, small treats so that you’re not adding too many calories to your puppy’s daily intake but treats that your puppy will really like and they only get when they eliminate in the right place. Put them in a bag by the back door and when you go outside with your puppy, when they urinate or defecate, immediately give them one of these little treats. The more you do that, the more it will positively reinforce that appropriate place to eliminate.
If you catch them eliminating in the house, you have your options to potentially use punishment. I would avoid that the best you can. I don’t like using that because I think it could scare the puppy and make the environment a little bit scary. Some people will do things like make a very loud noise, a yelp or a shriek that may scare your puppy a little bit when they eliminate inside. Again, I would try to positively reinforce it with treats outside before you use tactics like that.
Keep in mind that this will take some time, you’ll need to be patient, but if you keep at it and diligently be as consistent as possible, they will learn to eliminate properly. And I wish you the best of luck. You can find out more here at healthcareforpets.com.
Dr. Greenway discusses how to potty train a puppy with and without a pee pad. Other topics covered in this video include importance of praise, treats, appropriate defecation, appropriate urination, positive reinforcement and punishment.
