Author: So, You would like to know what is best puppy housebreaking method?
Puppy housebreaking method is said to be matter of preference and to certain extent it may be the case.
However, as many unfortunate dog owners with impaired mobility or puppy owners who live in high rise building in downtown will point out sometimes there is no choice but to opt in for so called indoor puppy housebreaking.
Fortunately, house training a puppy in apartment-thanks to some great tools that we have at our disposal-could be done at least as simple as outdoor puppy housebreaking method.
There are few things that work in our favor:
Inborn Instinct To Seek Out A Den
Puppies have inborn instinct to seek out and to take care of their den. This alone is great help when creating the plan for house training a puppy in an apartment.
Armed with this knowledge we should help our new puppy to find his den. That’s right. How about nice create?
When choosing right create we should pay attention not to buy too large create or our puppy could decide to use one side as a toilet.
To avoid this (if our crate is large) we should block off one side and leave only enough space for our puppy to stand up and turn around.
Puppy Potty Schedule
Puppy potty schedule is very important part of our overall puppy housebreaking plan.
Knowing our puppy schedule or scheduling potty breaks for our lovely puppy will help to predict when our puppy will need to eliminate.
And this is will be great help for we now have opportunity to match the behavior with positive experience.
By now we should have our verbal cue ready (go potty, do your business or something that makes sense to you).
The idea is simple! We know that our puppy needs to eliminate and therefore we will use our verbal cue to match with the behavior.
If repeated enough our puppy with associate the cue with the behavior and in the future when we say the cue he will eliminate. And when he does we should reinforce it with some kind of reward…be it yummy treat or toy or just a praise. It has been found out that dog is more willing to repeat or to offer behavior that he gets reward for. It is called operant conditioning.
Choosing The Potty Spot
To make it easier for our puppy and for ourselves as well we should dedicate potty area in our apartment and should always take our puppy to this area and apply above “housebreaking tricks” to get our puppy to eliminate and than to reinforce it.
In order to keep this area clean we could use some tools such as news paper, litter boxes and/or indoor pet potty pads such as PetZoomPetPark as well as proper cleaners.
Stay Consistent And Patient
The consistence and patience are two last peaces of the puzzle that we will need to master the art of house training a puppy in a apartment.
Dogs learn through repetition and therefore we should give them some time to build the association between the behavior and its consequence. Remember the old say: “The Rome wasn’t built in a day!”
Related posts: