One of the most important factors of puppy training is rewards training and providing him with praises everytime he does something right just like praising him when he chews on toys instead of your shoes or when he does toilet duties outside of the house. Spend time with your puppy in his training months so that is easier to train him.
House training should be establishing routines for him to do things while you are with him so that you can provide him with rewards. It also lessens the chances of him doing the wrong things like urinating or pooping inside the house.
When you cannot be home, ensure that he can be somewhere confined to do his toilet duties. Never leave him alone inside the house until he is fully housetrained. Unless you want some accidents to happen.
Crate-training vs Confinement
Crate-training is introducing your puppy to his sleeping quarters. Puppies do not like dirty sleeping areas. Crate-training usually goes hand in hand with toilet training. Confining, on the other hand, is curbing his freedom to move around and stops him from eliminating in his space.
There are two types of confinement – short term and long term. Short term confinement is when you leave him in an isolated space so he does not eliminate and will eliminate only as soon as you release him. Long-term confinement when you are not home is to control mistakes and accidents to a designated area.
He learns to hold the pee and go at specific periods. Let him out and walk him on a leash outside on those schedules. Confining to a crate should be done when you are at home. Let him out at night to relieve himself every time he feels like it.
Write down his schedules during crate training. But make sure that you also feed him on a given schedule. It gives you the chance to arrange when you will take him out of the crate to walk and eliminate outside. After which, give him the freedom to move around the house under your supervision.
Confine him to a crate one hour before the scheduled time of elimination to prevent him from deviating from the schedule. Be consistent and provide him with lots of rewards and praises after every elimination on the correct spots. This way he will be training his body as well on this schedule and reduce any mistake that can come up in the future.
Mistakes and accidents can happen during training. Learn to accept this. Just clean up the urine or poop when it happens. Make sure to disinfect it to remove any scent of elimination as dogs like to eliminate on the same spot. Do not scold him that won’t help.
Mistakes happen when you have allowed your pup to move around without your supervision early and were not able to foresee his correct elimination schedule. Just get back to the drawing board and continue crate and toilet training again until you both get it right.
