House training is one of the first training jobs you’ll have to do as a dog owner. This is important because living with an animal that has not been trained to control her toilet habits, is both unpleasant and unhealthy.

Fortunately, with the proper training techniques, and lots of persistence, house training a puppy is not that difficult to do.

In fact, all you have to do to ensure success, is to tap into your dog’s natural behavior. For starters, dogs are, by nature, clean animals and will never “do their business” close to where they eat and sleep, except in extreme circumstances.

Secondly, dogs love to please us and will do whatever it takes to make us happy.

Remember these two principles as you house train your dog, as they are the secret to success regardless of the method you employ.

Here are some common methods that are used for house training dogs;

Supervision Method

Crate Training

Paper Training

Litter Box Method

The method you choose is entirely up to you, but my favorite is crate training. I have trained many dogs using this method and I am always blown away at how easy it is. This is probably because it taps the two aspects of dog behavior I mentioned earlier.

With crate training your puppy you use these behavioral aspects to your advantage – a much better approach than chasing your dog and trying to haul him outdoors, or to the paper every time he squats down.

You may however prefer one of the other methods, which is also okay – use what works for you. The most important thing is that you remain calm while toilet training your dog. Shouting and getting upset won’t achieve anything other than making the dog afraid of you.

Remember that you are dealing with a baby. If a baby messes her diaper you don’t scream at her, swat her with a newspaper, or rub her nose in it, would you? The same applies here.

The puppy doesn’t yet know that she has done something wrong. But persist with your training and she’ll soon get the picture. Dogs are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. So stick with it and you’ll see results.

Want to see results even faster?

Then praise your pup when she succeeds.

Your puppy desperately wants to make you happy. When you praise her for ‘going’ outside, or on the paper, she learns that this behavior pleases you, and she’s encouraged to repeat the behavior, just to get more praise from you.

And don’t be stingy with the praise either. You need to make it very obvious that you are pleased with her behavior, so be enthusiastic, be effusive, be downright over the top!

Later, when you move on to basic obedience training, your pup will already understand that when she does what you ask, she gets praise and rewards. So house training actually lays the groundwork for all your dog training efforts.

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