How to Potty-Train Your Dog

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Ty Brown with dogbehavioronline.com. I'm here in Riverton, Utah today teaching you how to train a dog. The purpose of today's training is teaching you how to potty train a dog. Now potty training a dog is step number one for any dog when it comes into the home. Nobody likes to clean up accidents and so it is very important from a young age to teach your dog where it is appropriate to go to the bathroom and where it's not. There is four major steps that you need to keep in mind when you are potty training a dog. The first one is prevention. Prevention is a huge part of potty training a dog. By prevention I mean never allowing it to happen in the first place. The way to accomplish that is through proper supervision and that takes two different ways. Number one when you're home you should keep the dog with you. Often times with a young puppy or a dog that is not house trained or potty trained yet I'll even keep the dog on a leash in the house with me so that he can't get away and sneak behind the couch and go to the bathroom. When I'm gone then I'll use something like a crate so that the dog is in a place where he is not going to go to the bathroom and in doing that by keeping the dog with me and keeping the dog in the crate I can prevent the dog from going to the bathroom in the first place. The second step to potty training a dog is encouraging the proper behavior. Now this is pretty easy. You take your dog outside to go to the bathroom and when he does go to the bathroom you make it a wonderful occasion for him. You praise him, you pet him. If you have a treat you give him a treat. What you want to do is over and over and over associate a word such as go to the bathroom. He goes to the bathroom, you give him a treat and soon he starts to realize boy this sure is fun to go to the bathroom outside. The third step to potty training a dog is correcting the bad behavior when it does happen. Even though you are supervising the dog by the use of the crate and by keeping him on a leash, and even though you are encouraging him to go to the bathroom outside he is still going to have some accidents and so when he does you quickly want to tell him no firmly as you rush him outside using the leash and get him outside to go to the bathroom there. The last thing you want to do in potty training a dog is to get your dog on a schedule and that's a food schedule and a bathroom schedule. Take your dog out to the bathroom first thing in the morning and last thing at night, directly after eating, one hour after eating, any time you take your dog out of the crate and any other time you feel like your dog needs to go to the bathroom. Also get your dog on a food schedule. For dogs six months and younger they should be eating three times a day. Dogs from six months to a year should be eating two times a day and so what you want to do is get a dog on a schedule of eating and that way you know when he needs to go to the bathroom. By following these four steps you'll successfully potty train your dog."