5 Tips To Potty Training A Puppy

House training or potty training a puppy is one of the first few important tasks that every new dog owners will have to undertake when they first introduce their puppy to its new home.

While the initial puppy potty training process can be challenging especially when you are a new owner or when the puppy is just a few weeks old, the good news is all puppies can be toilet trained successfully if you are persistent, patient and take it a step at a time.

To have a young puppy establish good toilet habits early, here are a few common sense housebreaking tips you can apply to potty training a puppy successfully.

1. The first thing you need to do is to learn as much as possible about the breed of your puppy. By talking to other dog owners, veterinarians and reading books, you can discover many tips and pointers along the way to help you in your puppy potty training process.
2. When you wake up in the morning, avoid praising or greeting your puppy until he has used the bathroom. This will develop into a routine for him and once he realizes that he gets a lot of loving attention and praise after he uses the bathroom in the morning, this pattern will stick in his head and he will understand what to do in order to get what he wants, which is your praise!
3. When you start to bring your puppy outside to potty, choose a cue word like 'go potty' and stick to using the same command everytime so that he will understand what it means each time you lead him to the potty area.
4. Similarly, whatever route you take from the house to his potty area, use the same path every single time you take him to use the bathroom. This will help create a pattern so that he understands that it is time to go to the bathroom when you are walking him through the same route.
5. And of course, it should go without saying that you need to be generous with your praise and loving caresses when your puppy properly uses the bathroom in the designated area. You must help him associate housebreaking with a positive experience and showering him with love and affection is the right way to do it.

Given proper attention, the process of potty training a puppy should take approximately two to four weeks to establish a routine and between six to twelve months to be completed. And remember to start the potty training a puppy early because it is always easier to cultivate good habits in a dog from the beginning than it is to break bad habits later.