Author: Puppy housebreaking by definition is nothing else but teaching your puppy to do the “business” where and when you ask him to do it.
While there are many different approaches how to teach our puppy, not only puppy housebreaking but anything else, the best results are achieved if our training is reward based type of training.
The idea is simple-we want to pair the behavior with reward and in turn our puppy will offer that behavior more often (or when asked to).
Those familiar with basic dog obedience training will know that we can wait for puppy to do something (the behavior) and than reinforce that behavior or we can speed up this process by getting our puppy to do certain activity/behavior and than reinforce it by reward.
One example would be “cheating” puppy into “sit” position” and than reinforcing it.
While this method works great for basic obedience-puppy housebreaking, for obvious reasons, will require slightly different approach. However, there is no reason for panic just yet. If you remember if we want to be successful with puppy housebreaking we should have good plan in place for potty training a puppy in apartment and one of most important part of this plan is the schedule. Having schedule in place will help us “predict’ when our puppy will need to eliminate.
Puppy Housebreaking-How To Teach Our Puppy To Ring A Potty Bell
In addition our puppy will give us clear signals (body language) when he needs to go out. Unfortunately, a lot of times we fail to read those signals which than can lead to accidents.
One great way to avoid this is to teach our puppy to give us loud and clear signal that he wants to go out. When we said “loud” we meant “loud as a bell” 
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That’s right we are talking about teaching our puppy to ring a bell! It is much simpler than it may appear to be. Remember the Pavlov’s Conditioning Experiment? Here is simple way to teach our puppy (or adult dog) how to ring a bell:
- First we need to know our puppy body language when he needs to go out. When we know this we will prompt our puppy to go out (Any verbal cue we are comfortable with).
- We will need some bell that will be used as a market. Usually the best place to put this bell would be the exit door (but make sure it is at right height so that our puppy can reach it).
- Whenever we take our puppy outside for potty break we would ring a bell (this way our puppy will build association between ringing the bell and potty break). We shouldn’t be ringing the bell if we take puppy for the walk but only if we take puppy out for potty break.
- We should encourage our puppy to try it and praise our puppy as he getting closer to bell or sniffs it.
- When we get outside we should encourage our puppy to eliminate and when he does it is important to use the verbal cue as well.
- Eventually our puppy will start touching the bell either with his paw or maybe his nose. When that happens we should reward our puppy greatly. Usually after few repetition our puppy establishes strong connection between ringing the bell and the potty break and will start using it. On our part we should keep reinforcing this behavior and our effort puppy housebreaking training efforts will soon pay off.
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