Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Quick and Easy Way to Paper Train Your Dog


Why would you paper train your dog? Paper training a dog works great for people who have small to medium size dogs, if you're living in a high rises urban building where access to acceptable potty area for your dog is a challenge. Paper training is also a good option for the elderly or people who have disabilities.

Before we get into the step-by-step ways to paper train your dog, let me make one thing clear. You can greatly improve your chances for success if you choose one method of potty training and stick to it. Please don't confuse your dog with paper training and outside potty training. You can always train your dog to go potty outside later. Also crate training has nothing to do with paper training. You shouldn't encourage your dog to ever go potty inside of a crate; a crate is your dogs den and should be a clean, dry, warm and safe place for your dog to go when you can't supervise them, not a toilet.

Step-by-step paper training.

Choose a place at will be convenient and easy to clean. Most people choose a section of the kitchen or laundry room because these rooms usually have tiled or linoleum floors making clean up much easier than a carpeted floor.

Spread a thick layer of news paper in the corner of the room. You will want to make this area rather large at first because your puppy has no idea that he is to go potty on the paper yet.

To ensure greater success you will want to limit your puppy's movement to the papered area. It is a good idea to erect barriers to confine your puppy to the papered area. (Many lager pet stores have portable, light weight pet barriers at a reasonable cost.) If you decide to use a smaller room like a laundry, just paper the entire floor.

Puppies will relieve themselves fairly randomly on the paper. In a young puppy, the time between knowing they have to go potty and the time that they relieve themselves is instantaneous. You should make sure that your puppy only has a chance to go potty on the paper. He needs to make the connection between the sensation of going potty and having the paper under his paws.

In 7 to 10 days you should be able to reduce the papered area of the floor. This will give him access to un-papered surfaces (leave his pen or barricaded the same size as before for now.)

Gradually make the papered area smaller. If you give him the proper amount of time to get used to the papered area, he should naturally restrict his potty to the papered area as it shrinks. If at any time you notice he is not potting on the papered area then you will have to increase his papered area until he gets used to only going on the papered area again.

Try not to get frustrated, this doesn't mean the paper training isn't working it only means you are going a bit too fast for your puppy.

This process can take eight to twelve weeks for most dogs so be patient. Until he is going on the paper reliably, it is a good idea to limit his access to the rest of the house. Anytime he has the ability to relieve himself elsewhere you are prolonging the training process. So, when you do let your puppy out of his pen it is very important that you supervise him 100%.

To make sure your training is as efficient as possible you should always confine him to the papered area unless he is sleeping, eating or being played with/100% supervision.

Reinforce the positive.

When you see your puppy relieving himself on the paper, don't interrupt him, but as soon as he is done, praise him lavishly with a "good boy" a pat on the head and a treat.

If you catch him relieving himself other than on the paper, clap your hands loudly and interrupt him, sweep him up and take him to his papered area. When he finishes on the paper (this may take some time because he was just whisked away and he's not sure what just happened.) praise him lavishly, really make a big deal over it!

If you come across an accident (a wet spot or pile on the un-papered part of the floor) there really isn't anything you can do, you have missed your window of opportunity for training. If you try to discipline him at this point he won't know what he did wrong. All you can do is clean up the mess and increase your supervision. If this continues to be a problem, you will need to go back to restricting his unsupervised area again.

Feeding your dog on a set schedule will greatly improve you and your puppy's success in paper training as well. Because most puppies will need to relieve themselves within 30 minutes of eating you can develop and encourage a time table of eating and relieving.




Like people, dogs have personalities and every dog has a different personality. Training a dog can be a challenging and frustrating experience. It doesn't have to be. If your having trouble with potty training, chewing, digging, leash training or any number of dog behavior problems. Matt can help! The animal control facilities are full of misunderstood pets. Before you give up, please use every resource possible. Most likely he has a tip or method to help you. If he hasn't covered your problem in one of his articles than he knows someone who has. EzDogTrainingAtHome.com to get started.





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