When you bring your new puppy home for the first time, you want to give it all the puppy housebreaking tips you can. Housebreaking a dog is an important responsibility and takes a lot of time and energy on your part. When a dog becomes accustomed to living in its new surroundings, housebreaking will become easier. However, puppies have their own special habits and reactions that make housebreaking them a little more difficult than you might have thought. Keep in mind that puppies do not realize that there are things that they should not do in order to make themselves safe. Puppies will learn these rules as they go along, but for the first few weeks, follow these puppy housebreaking tips to make sure that your new family member is safe.
An Overview
The first of the puppy housebreaking tips is that you should never use a crate. Crates are wonderful tools for helping to housebreak your puppy, but they should only be used for this purpose under the supervision of an adult. If you are letting your puppy stay inside a crate for an extended period of time, it will teach the puppy that it must go to the bathroom outside, which can be dangerous. While puppies may not be able to hold their bladder for five hours, they will learn to hold it for much longer if they are in a crate. Also, a puppy who is not crated will smell and see everything in the crate, so you should always have your puppy confined to a crate.
It is extremely important that you never leave a puppy unsupervised. Young puppies are very curious and tend to explore everything in a dog’s surroundings. If you leave a puppy unsupervised for even a short period of time, you could run the risk of the puppy hurting itself. As they grow older, puppies are less likely to be injured by things in the environment.
Puppy Housebreaking Tips
Another one of the basic puppy housebreaking tips is that you should never walk around your puppy when it is a young puppy. A young puppy will instinctively move toward the door whenever you approach to get outside, but as the puppy ages, this instinct will diminish. Before walking around your dog, rub its belly or nape it while giving it praise so that it gets the idea that it is doing the right thing. A young puppy does not need to be walked because it needs to stretch and do other activities. You should only take your puppy outside when it is hungry or feels uncomfortable.
Potty training your puppy should begin soon after you bring it home from the shelter. Potty training is easier if you start housebreaking it while it is still a puppy because puppies are more resistant to change. When puppies are housebroken on a daily basis, they are less likely to need to be given housebreaking breaks. However, on an intermittent basis, you should take your puppy outside to go potty, and then take it back inside immediately after.
You should never punish your puppy for not going potty outside, because this can cause psychological problems. To help solve this problem, always praise your puppy when it goes potty. You should place a dog house inside and make sure that it is clean. You should also feed your puppy in the same area as where it pees its waste, because the smell will remind the puppy of its spot in the house.
Bottom Line
One of the best puppy housebreaking tips you could follow is to give your dog plenty of exercise. Dogs love exercise, and they are likely to catch on that they are supposed to go outside to do their business after they have eaten their dinner. To start with, you may just take your puppy outside every couple of hours. Over time, you can gradually increase the amount of time your puppy has outside. Once your puppy has become used to going outside on a regular basis, you can start taking it out more often.
