17 MarEpisode 3 | A modern guide to house training your dog
Episode 3 of School For The Dogs Podcast is all about teaching dogs where to pee and poop. For the sake of simplicity, I’m referring to this as “house training,” but, as I mentioned in the podcast, I think a new term should be coined!
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Transcript:
Annie:
Hey everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Today, I wanted to talk about one of the main reasons that people contact a dog trainer, especially when people get a new puppy and that is they want their dog to know where he should and should not pee and poop. Now, I am going to talk in particular about how to work on training a puppy, but most of the tips I'm going to give could be applied to older dogs as well. Whether it's a new dog in your household or a dog that just needs a refresher course, but first of all, what do we call this kind of training?
Well for simplicity, I'm going to refer to it as house training. But I think it's kind of a weird way to refer to it because first of all, like most of my clients, I don't actually live in a house and also aren't we training the dog to not go in the house most of the time? So wouldn't it be NOT in house training? I can only think that it's a term that must stem from a time when dogs mostly lived outside and so training them to be in the house meant training them to not eliminate in the house.
Um, but actually in advance of doing this episode, I tried to research a little bit the origins of different ways that people have referred to what we're calling house training. And I looked up the word house breaking, which is also a weird term. I think it's generally understood at least as it applies to dog training. But I mean if you're “breaking in” something that you're kind of like doing something to the thing right? Like you break in a pair of shoes or I guess you break a horse, that's another training term, but you're not doing anything really to your house, although, maybe you are, because I am going to suggest some ways that you can set up your home to help with house training, but still house breaking I dunno, it's kinda weird, right?
So I put it in to Google's Ngram search tools, which shows when and where and how words have been used. And as far as I can tell, it looks like up until,maybe like the mid 1900’s, housebreaking really referred to breaking into a house. It didn't really have anything to do with dogs. And that's still a definition found in many dictionaries. But then I looked it up in the online dictionary, Oxforddictionaries.com and it gives the definition “housebreak: verb housebroken, housebroken, train a pet to urinate and defecate outside the house or only in a special place; house train.” And then the example it gives is, “an elephant is exceedingly difficult to housebreak.” And I mean, why are you trying to teach an elephant to not pee or poop in your house? Why do you have an elephant in your house to begin with?
And I mean talk about breaking things. It just, it just doesn't make any sense. Anyway. I've also heard it called elimination training. I like that term, although I wonder if it sounds a little bit like dog training jargon. I'm not sure. Uh, anyway, for simplicity I'm going to call it “house training,” but do me a favor and if you have a better idea of how we can refer to “house training,” I am all for rebranding this kind of training with a new term. Please tell me, I really want to hear your ideas. Facebook is a great way to reach out. We have a Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs.
And one other thing that I wanted to mention before I delve deeply into how to get your dog to pee and poop where you want them to go is that that place where you want them to go may not necessarily be outside.I have had plenty of clients who for one reason or another need their dog to go inside, either all of the time or some of the time. Sometimes it's because of their lifestyle. Sometimes it's because of the dog's needs and no judgment there. Cats certainly go inside and dogs are highly trainable and can be trained to go inside or outside and the method I'm going to describe on how to train them can equally be used to teach your dog to go inside. I just suggest if you are going to teach your dog to go inside, have one specific spot that's going to be their “go spot.” Now that spot could be a wee wee pad. It could even be a litter box. I know one trainer, Jay Andors, who teaches his clients who want to have dogs that will go both inside and outside to have them go on blocks of cement inside since it's a similar texture to what you might be training your dog to go on if you're also training him to go outside. It could be a patch of grass, whether that's synthetic grass or real grass. There are services that will deliver you grass every week if you sign up for them. Anyway, I will link to some different products that you can use for that reason in the show notes.
**Music**
When you're thinking about house training, the big thing you want to think about is management, but management is part of what I call the training triad: management, timing and rewards.
I'm going to talk about how all three of those things factor into house training, but management is the real biggie when it comes to teaching dogs where you want them to go. And I think that's great news for any dog owner because management is everything that we can do from the outside in order to create situations where our dogs are going to be very likely to do the things we want them to do and aren't going to have lots of opportunities to do the stuff we don't want them to do, in this case, pee and poop in the wrong places. The most important thing you want to manage when you're dealing with house training is your dog's space. Literally, where is your dog physically spending his time? Because I want your dog to only have liberty to get to roam around when there is nothing inside their bladder or bowels. Jean Donaldson, in the excellent book, The Culture Clash, says in her home, only empty dogs get to play Frisbee and I think that's a good thing to remember. Your dog should not get to roam around your home unless they are empty.
Ultimately, you'll be able to use the opportunity to let them have some freedom inside of your home as a reward that can positively reinforce good housebreaking. Up until that point, you're going to want to take every opportunity to physically manage where your dog is spending his time, so that when he does have to go, he is in the appropriate spot, be that outside on a leash, on the street or on your deck or in your yard or on your balcony or on a wee wee pad inside. So we really want to put some thought into where our dog is spending his time in order to set him up for success. And you know recently I had a little spell of being sick and it occurred to me that when you're sick to your stomach, it's a little bit like housebreaking in that it's a moment where you're trying to set yourself up for success and not to fail, failing, being puking or pooping anywhere other than the bathroom or maybe a plastic bag.
It's a moment where we're really tuned into managing our own space and where we're spending time as it relates to our bodily functions. If you've ever been sick to your stomach, you probably have found yourself camped out in the bathroom. Maybe even bring a pillow into the bathroom and sleeping on the bathroom floor, not because it's comfortable, but by limiting your sphere so you want to set up your dog's life so that similarly they're going to be in the right spot at the right time. Of course, the big difference is it's inherently punishing for us to puke anywhere other than a toilet. It's something that nobody wants to do in the wrong spot. Where as to a dog peeing or pooping really anywhere is inherently reinforcing. As we all know, peeing and pooping just feels good and that's why it's so important that right off the bat we started out having them pee and poop in the places we want them to go because it's going to be inherently reinforcing when they're going in those appropriate spots.
So the number one management tool that I suggest to clients, especially with a new puppy, is a crate. And I think a crate should not be much larger than your dog. And there are a few reasons for this. One, your dog probably won't pee and poop in his or her crate if it's not very large. It's, kind of like, you want them to think of it as a studio apartment where they have to spend all their time. So if it gets too messy, it's going to be sucky for them. And usually dogs don't like to sit or lie down or sleep or hang out in their own mess. So that's one reason why you want a crate that's pretty small. Another reason why I like to have a crate that's as small as possible is because it makes it easier to bring it from room to room. And it's really important that your dog not think of the crate as a place where they're forced to go in order to spend time alone, especially if you have a puppy, because puppies need to learn to be alone. But before you want to teach them to be in the crate by themselves, you want them to feel good about being in the crate at all.
And if you have a smaller crate, it's easier to bring it from one room to the other with you to even put it on your desk maybe or put it on your bedside table, if you have a small dog and a big bedside table. I like having crates that are open wire mesh crates, rather than sort of the enclosed hard plastic kind because I want my dog to feel he's part of everything that's going on, he's just in his little spot where he is not going to have an opportunity to do lots of things I don't want him to do be that peeing on the carpet or chewing on the coffee table
So once you have a crate, you're then going to try and teach your dog to feel good about being in there. How can you do that? Well, feeding your dog in the crate is certainly one way to start, but also just a lot of the time in our puppy classes we'll have crates out and we'll work on teaching dogs to sit in a crate or doing hand touches in a crate, and as much as you're working on teaching those specific behaviors, you're also teaching them-the crate is a nice place to be, and it's a place where they can spend time with you, which should always be a good thing for them.
Now, a lot of clients of mine have a setup that I don't love and I advise against, which is having a crate with a door open inside of a penned area and a wee wee pad inside of that area. My feeling is if your goal is to teach your dog to go do their business outside, you want to get away from using a wee wee pad or having a wee wee pad just available at all times as soon as possible. And the reason for this is that behaviors that are reinforced are more likely to happen again, that I think of as kind of a dog training mantra- behaviors that are reinforced or are more likely to happen. Again, we all know that peeing and pooping generally feels good, so if your dog is peeing and pooping on a wee wee pad in your home, that behavior is being reinforced, which is okay if that's something that's okay with you in the long term If you want peeing and pooping to really only be outside activities then the way I think of it is you're kind of putting yourself into behavioral debt. You are creating a behavior that you're going to have to get rid of, which is possible to do just like it's possible to pay off debt, but given the choice for my clients, I would rather they not accumulate that debt to begin with and not let their dogs know how rewarding it can be to pee and poop inside.
And I think this is especially true if you're trying to house train your dog during a time of year where it's especially hot or cold outside or if you live in a place where it's often especially hot or cold because if given the choice between peeing and pooping in privacy in a climate-controlled apartment or outside where it's 10 degrees or 90 degrees, where do you think you would choose to go?
So, I think, let's not even give them that option. Also, my belief, especially city dwelling dogs, is that we're asking a lot of our dogs, asking them to go outside at all, let alone asking them to pee and poop outside. Peeing and pooping in nature is something that many animals choose to do in private or with as much privacy as possible. And that probably has much less to do with modesty than it does with the fact that when you are eliminating, you are inherently vulnerable. And for any dog, especially a puppy who is just getting used to being in his or her new home, being on the city streets, I'm sure must be terrifying, thanks to the fact that they're crowded with people and dogs and cars and skateboards. Next time you're on the street when no one's looking, crouched down and put your head as low as you can get it because that is basically the viewpoint of at least a small dog.
It's easy to imagine how frightening that experience must be, to be that low down to the ground and be surrounded by animals of a totally different species who are a whole lot larger than you. Not to mention all those other factors like the vehicles and the weather and the fact that a lot of the time people are house training their dog at the same time that they're trying to get their dog used to walking on a leash, which I think is generally speaking a mistake. While it's definitely necessary to have your dog on a leash if you are going to bring him outside, teaching a dog to walk on a leash in such a way that he isn't ever going to be tugging at the end of it is a really important thing to do. That can be done separately with instead the initial focus just being on wearing a leash and collar and being outside at all.
And again, this comes back to fear. It's very hard to do good dog training if you're dealing with a fearful dog and when you're introducing a whole new world to a puppy, that world being the city streets and you're also introducing new equipment on top of that, you want them to feel as comfortable as possible before you start demanding certain things of their behavior. Too often, I think what happens is we put a collar on the puppy, maybe the first time the puppy's ever worn a collar. We attach a leash to that collar. We bring them, we put them on the sidewalk and we expect them to walk down the street and take a pee and a poop. Fortunately, dogs are highly adaptable and plenty of dogs can do all of this first time out the gate with no problem. But for the rest of the dogs out there, I think that we're asking a lot and we need to acknowledge that and we need to first work at making them feel comfortable outside before we start worrying about how they're performing on the leash outside.
So my suggestion is to use a leash like you use a seatbelt, you're not going to drive like crazy because you're wearing a seatbelt. It's there just in case, and especially when you have a young puppy on the street, you should not even have to use that leash a little bit. It should really just be there in case of an emergency and there really shouldn't be a lot of walking going on in any case, if we're working with a puppy here. If it's possible for you to carry your puppy from inside your home to an appropriate place for them to pee and poop outside, I suggest doing that because, again, if they have the opportunity to pee or poop on the way to where you're going, that behavior is only going to be reinforced and only going to be more likely to happen again in the future.So I don't want them to have the chance to pee in the hallway or in the lobby.
So anyway, you have your dog inside, you decide it's time to give them a chance to go potty, again, all these stupid euphemisms potty go to the bathroom, whatever you want to call it. The crate is going to help you figure out when to take them out because usually coming out of the crate is a great precursor to having to pee or poop. Again, this is a big reason to be using the crate. If your dog's in the crate, you know that when he comes out, he's going to have to go. And I should say that when it comes to managing your dog's space and really how they're spending their time in this way, a crate is not the only option.
A simple bag can do the same job if you're dealing with a small puppy. It doesn't even have to be an official dog carrying bag. Any tote bag might do the job. Just the idea is you want your dog to be with you. You want to know exactly what your dog is doing because you don't want him going to the other room to eliminate. You can also tether your dog. Again, you don't want them to practice being at the end of that tether. So committing to tethering your dog to you might mean having to move a lot with the dog so that you don't get to that taut line place. But if he's tethered to you, you're going to really be able to see the clues he's giving when he has to go. Some dogs will start sniffing the ground a lot. Some dogs will start spinning, some dogs will cry and if your dog is tethered to you, you are definitely going to start tuning into those signs.
You can also use a pen in a similar way. I just generally suggest, to penning off an area where you are going to be spending time with your puppy in that area, so penning off an area around the couch or around your desk. You just want it to be an area that’s small enough so that you're well aware of whatever it is your dog is doing. So if he does start to give signals that he needs to pee or poop, you are going to be able to put him in the right spot right away. When I'm watching a puppy, I generally employ some combo of all of these management methods combined with some amount of separation training or training them to be alone.
But that too, I think should not necessarily be your first area of focus if you have a puppy or any new rescue dog because, again, sometimes I think we end up asking too much of our puppies or new dogs in our homes. We're asking them to be physically in a brand new spot, maybe an environment that's very different than anything they've ever known before. We're asking them to accept things from new people. We're asking them possibly to coexist with other animals that are new to them, and we might be asking them also to spend time in some kind of confined area, which may also be something completely new. Now, of course, some dogs are totally fine being alone right off the bat, but a lot of them aren't. Dogs are very social animals, which is, of course, part of the reason why we love them so much. So I think it's important to try and spend a lot of time with your new dog in those first weeks whenever possible. And if you're not able to be there then to hire someone, because again, so much about housebreaking is about managing their environment and their environments a lot easier to manage, and it's easier to make them feel more comfortable in their environment if you or someone is actually there overseeing it.
Now we've talked a lot about management. The second part of the all important training triad is timing and timing is certainly crucial when it comes to getting your dog out at appropriate intervals. How are you going to figure out the timing of those intervals? Well, I usually suggest aiming for six walks a day. Actually let me rephrase that. I suggest that your dog gets six pee or poop opportunities a day. Now this might sound like a lot, but the secret is that it should really not amount to more than 10 or 15 minutes total a day, meaning that most of your walks should only be two or three minutes long.
Now, if you have a puppy, you might have one of those outings be a longer trip, again, though, that would mostly be you carrying your dog, but bringing them somewhere new, be it a friend's house or into the shopping mall, or take them to a puppy play date, or take them on the subway. So you might have one socialization outing a day, but the rest of your outings should really be about peeing and pooping. It's not about learning how to walk on leash. It's not about saying hi to every other dog on the street. It's about you giving them an opportunity to do their important business. And remember, inside, they've been in the crate, they've been in a bag they've been under your arm, they've been on your lap, they've been in a penned area with you, ideally, they shouldn't have had an opportunity to pee or poop. But now you're outside and you're putting them down on an appropriate place where they can go and you're giving them the chance to do this thing, which is going to feel really good and actually might even help them learn to feel good about being outside because what association are they going to make? “Wow, when I'm outside here, this is where I get to do that pee and poop thing and peeing and pooping sure feels good.”
Now you might have to do a little bit of experimenting to find a place where your dog wants to go. This is especially true if you live on a very busy street. A busy street is very likely to be distracting if not scary. So I'd suggest carrying your dog to some quiet-ish area, if you can find one near your home. You might also want to experiment with different surfaces. A lot of dogs like to pee on things that are soft. A lot of dogs will go if you can find some sort of grassy patch outside. But you can try other textures too. I know some dogs who like to go on manhole covers or even grates, although you might want to think about what's under that grate as I know some building supers who are pretty annoyed about dogs peeing and pooping on grates because guess who has to clean up.You can also try in between two parked cars. Some dogs seem to like having a little kind of private stall in that way.
And once you try these new surfaces, new places outside, give your dog a second to sniff around. Sniffing is often a precursor to going. So let them, let them do that. Again though, I don't want you going too far from your home because these walks should be really short. And there are two reasons why I think house training should be about lots of short walks rather than a handful of longer ones. The first reason is that, like I said, being outside can be really overwhelming for a lot of dogs being on the city streets, especially. So I'd rather you introduce a puppy to the city streets in lots of small doses. Because if being outside is stressful than the whole process of going outside, like physically relieving themselves outside is going to be harder, but also all the things that lead up to going outside are going to become difficult for the dog and I want it to become second nature to your dog. How do you make something second nature? Well, it certainly helps if you do it a lot. So I want your dog to have lots of practice of the simple act of being taken outside and coming back in and being taken outside and coming back in. It's going to make the whole experience overall less scary, just more routine. And if they are nervous about being outside, being outside for a shorter period is certainly going to be easier for them to manage then being outside for a longer period.
But even more than that, the reason I want you to make these walks nice and short is because I want your dog not only to learn, “I have to pee and poop outside,” but I want them to learn “I have to be in poop outside as soon as we get outside.” Because why not? If you can teach your dog that simply going outside is a cue to go potty. Why wouldn't you? Because there's going to be times when it's awful outside, it's really hot or it's really cold or it's really windy or they're going to be times when you're late for a meeting or you're really tired, or for whatever reason you want your dog to go right away so you don't have to take them for a long walk. This doesn't mean that you can't take your dog for a long walk. You certainly can, but I'd rather you have a dog that goes pee and poop right away and then the reward for that can be a nice long walk. Or I should say it depends on the dog, for some dogs the more rewarding thing might be to go back inside. You have to figure that out about your dog. Rather than having a dog that thinks, “you know, we go out, we walk around, I sniff lots, we stroll. And then when I feel like it, I pee or poop.” Right? So how are you going to make that happen? Well, you're not going to take your dog on those long walks in less he has peed or pooped right away. So you're going to carry your dog out, put him down in ideally a spot where he's gone before, figure out whatever that texture is that he likes to go on. Give him a minute to sniff around maybe two minutes. If he doesn't go, you're going to scoop him up and bring him back inside. Then when you're inside, he's going to go back in the crate or he's going to go in that pen to area with you, or you're going to carry him, or you're going to tether him to you, but you're going to do whatever you need to do, management-wise, to make sure that he doesn't have the chance to go until you're ready to take about again.
Now during that interim period, your dog does not have to be confined. In fact, playing a game of tug or doing some training are good ways to get their insides moving in such a way that they may be more likely to go when you get them out again, half an hour later or so. I just want you actively with your dog during this period, actively supervising him so that he doesn't sneak off and go, when you're not looking. Of course, mistakes might happen. It's not a big deal. If you catch your dog peeing or pooping where he shouldn't, I suggest you just let him finish. I know some trainers suggest picking up the dog when they're peeing or pooping and putting them where you want them to be and I'm not aware of any scientific research that's been done on these two approaches. But the reason I think it's better to just let the dog finish what he's doing rather than interrupting him is because, like I said, I think peeing and pooping leaves any animal in a rather vulnerable state and if you're vulnerable, you're extra likely to be scared. And the last thing I want my dog to feel is scared about peeing and pooping in front of me. So I'd rather just not even acknowledge that it's happening and then clean it up as best I can. And you want to make sure to use an enzymatic-based cleaner, Nature's Miracle, is probably the one that most people know best. At School for the Dogs we like to use a product called Anti-Icky-Poo, which actually uses a combo of enzymes and live bacteria to get rid of the pee and poo smell. We have it in our shop and also online at storeforthedogs.com. You really do want to clean it well because even if you can't smell it anymore, they can smell it. And if your goal is to have them not go in your home, then you definitely want to get rid of any reminder that that was ever anything that they did to begin with.
And if they make a mistake again, I really don't want my dog to have any fears about peeing and pooping in front of me because he's going to have to do a lot of peeing and pooping in front of me during his lifetime. So if I catch him having an accident, I'm not even going to scold him. A lot of the time, I'm not even sure that verbal scolding is understood by a dog as something bad. So if they end up thinking that I'm actually just paying attention to them, then I risk positively reinforcing the behavior of going where they shouldn't. But even if I am successfully punishing them, I'm not sure that that dog knows he is being punished for peeing or pooping where he shouldn't. He might think not only that peeing and pooping in front of me is bad, but he might also think that hanging out on this rug is bad or that the police siren that he happened to hear at that same moment is bad. That's really a big problem of attempting to use really any kind of punishment in dog training is that because we don't ever know exactly what's going on in a dog's mind, we can never be sure what associations he's making. And often, it's possible that the associations he's making may not relate to the thing that we think we're punishing him for.
It's actually a case where punishment, in theory, should work better with people than with dogs in that we have language that we can use with each other, to be very specific about what we're punishing someone for. Although in my opinion, we still don't use punishment very effectively with each other, but I don't want to get too off topic, we're talking about pee and poop here.
So you've brought your dog outside. You've brought them to a couple of different surfaces to see what they like to pee and poop on. They didn't go within the first two or three minutes. You picked your puppy up, brought him back upstairs, crated him for a little while, or at least monitored him very closely, then you're going to bring him back downstairs. You're going to bring him back to that spot where he's gone before, perhaps, or else you're going to keep experimenting with new surfaces, new textures, new spots around your neighborhood. And lo and behold, he's going to go and it's going to be super exciting.
So now what are you going to do? Well after you've finished Snapchatting and Instagramming it and texting all your friends about this miraculous moment. Take note of where you are. What surface did your dog go on? What is the environment like? What did your dog do prior to peeing and pooping? Did he give you any clues he was going to go? Because all of it now is a cue to your dog. This is now what your dog's bathroom looks like to him. Every time your dog learns something, he learns it in a very specific way, in a very specific context. And the whole process of learning is the process of generalizing, Oh, this works in this situation and also works in that situation. It's like, when you're learning to read, you learn, “oh, this letter sounds like this and this word. And it also sounds like this in that word.” And a cue is simply some kind of indication we perceive that some behavior is going to work, is going to be successful. It's like a traffic light. You know how to hit the brakes on your car, but a red light is a cue telling you when it's a good idea to do that behavior. So everything in your dog's environment that he was able to perceive that preceded him, peeing or pooping, effectively acted as cues.
I recently wrote a blog post, which I'll put in the show notes and you can find it at schoolforthedogs.com on Teaching your dog to go using a verbal cue. I think the one I use in the blog post is “business time,” but you could say “go potty” or “go pee” or whatever you want. But it's a pretty simple process, especially if you have a dog who already knows to go outside. But someone asked me, what's the cue you use with your dog Amos, and I had to admit, I don't use a cue word, but that's because for him going outside is the cue. Just being on a leash on the city streets, he knows as soon as we hit that pavement, he has to go and a cue doesn't have to be a specific word or sound or gesture. Environments
are certainly cues as well.
**Music**
This brings us to the third part of our training triad, which is rewards. The good news is you don't even have to really reward this behavior in any specific way because, as I said, it's an inherently rewarding thing to pee or poop. And you're also going to reinforce the behavior by whatever you do immediately after he pees or poops. If you have a dog who seems like he'd rather be inside, you are going to hustle back inside. If you have a dog who seems like he'd like to go for a run, then I would immediately start the run portion of your walk after he does his peeing or pooping. You can certainly also use a food reward and I suggest that it be something extremely good. In the blog post, I talk about using bacon- just a small piece, one slice of bacon should last you a week because these should be very small little bits. But the reason I say bacon is because something fatty and yummy like bacon is generally enjoyed by almost every, every dog I've ever met and most humans too. And we're asking them to do something really important, so I think this is a job that we should pay them really, really well for. So whatever the treat is, I think it should be something extra special that they only get in that instant.
And you can certainly use verbal praise. You should just be careful to not start praising your dog until after they finish their pee or poop because you do not want to interrupt them. If you're going to give a food reward, you also want to wait until they're done. Don't give it while they're going. If you're going to give a cue word, it's also important that you give that cue word at the moment they start peeing or pooping,again, just once, because you don't want to keep repeating it because you don't want to be interrupting them.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you really want to be focusing on the first pee and the first poop during any given walk. If your dog goes more than that you're certainly not going to punish them for continuing to go, but you don't want a dog who is peeing five times so that they can get five pieces of bacon. Now, if you have a dog who you want to pee and poop inside, either all of the time or some of the time, or in a yard or say on your roof, you're basically gonna follow the same procedures that I've outlined here. The only difference is instead of picking your dog up and bringing him outside to the street on a leash, you are going to take your dog on, kind of, a walk to the wee wee pad or to the yard or to the roof. You don't have to have them on leash when you do this, but you do want to make sure that you're doing it on some sort of schedule and not letting them have the opportunities to go in the wrong spots.during the other times of day using your management tools: your a crate, your pen, your you're tethering.
You're also not going to bring him to the yard or to the wee wee pad or whatever, and then walk away. You want to make sure you're there so that you can perceive the cues so that you can give a cue, if you're going to be giving a verbal cue, and most importantly, so that you can be there to note if he goes and so that you can reward the going with bacon or praise or play or whatever it is you're going to use as a really awesome reward.
Now, often puppy owners start by having their puppies go pee or poop inside on a wee wee pad and then they transition to taking them outside. And this is usually because puppy owners are cautioned by their vets or by what they've read on the internet to not let their puppy out until they've had at least three rounds of their puppy shots. Some people will also wait for their puppy to get their rabies shot and by the time they get all the shots done, the puppy might be 14, 16, 18 weeks old. So frequently people will get a puppy when a puppy is eight or 10 or 12 weeks and then the puppy will spend four weeks or so practicing this behavior of peeing or pooping inside on a wee wee pad. Now, my feeling is that it's better to get a puppy out on the early side, rather than wait too long because the socialization window is very short and very important and, during that period, not only do we want to introduce our puppies to things like the city streets, but we also really want to start solidifying the important behaviors that we're going to expect from them like peeing and pooping outside. And we don't want them to develop habits that we're going to later try and get rid of habits like peeing and pooping inside.
And like I said, so much of learning is about generalizing and a dog can make the generalization,”oh, you know, peeing on this little soft square thing on the ground feels really good. Peeing on that larger, soft square thing on the ground is also going to feel really good.” And then you have a dog who is peeing on your bathmat and peeing on your carpets, and you're bringing your dog over to your in-law's place and your in-laws have wall to wall carpeting and your dog is just like, “Oh my God, this was the biggest wee wee pad I've ever seen. It's awesome. I love it.” And your dog totally doesn't understand why this is not a good idea because if it was okay to go on that soft, little thing at home, why isn't okay to go on this big, soft thing here. That's dog logic for you.
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My preference is to not let them establish the habit of being inside on soft things to begin with. So my suggestion is to forgo wee wee pads all together. I think it's possible to bring a dog outside safely by carrying him much of the time and putting him down in spots where he's not going to be bombarded by other dogs. I think it's definitely best to avoid other dogs when you're focusing on how's training a puppy and working with them on the street. But that shouldn't be hard because A: your puppy should be getting lots of really good off-leash play time so they're not going crazy trying to say hello to every single other dog they see and B: when you're walking a puppy, it's should be 90% carrying your puppy and 10% putting your puppy down. And it's definitely important when you bring a puppy outside to wipe off his feet when you get inside and also to take off your own shoes inside. Most of the stuff that we worry about puppies contracting on the street are going to come from their feet or your feet.
If you really are not wanting to bring your dog outside though until they get all of those shots, I suggest putting the wee wee pad down when you want your puppy to go, rather than just letting him have access to it all the time because, again, it can become a cue and that can be a good thing. You can have a dog who knows that he can go when the wee wee pad is down and he's not going to go in that spot when it's not down. You can teach that using all the management techniques we've talked about today. I have some clients who have brought the wee wee pad out into the hallway before they're ready to take their dog out on the city streets and they leash their dog up and walk them on that we wee wee pad in the hallway and that's a way to help them understand, you know, this pee and poop thing is something I'm not supposed to do in the apartment. Again, it's just a matter of being really thoughtful and taking them out on those “walks.” Even if the walk is just doing a little circle around a wee wee pad in your hallway.
Just a couple of other things I wanted to mention quickly. Definitely keeping a schedule is important and that schedule doesn't necessarily have to be the same exact schedule day-to-day. I know that I have a lot of clients who live busy lives and they don't have super predictable schedules, but you can still get a sense of when your dog is going to have to go if you start keeping a log of when you have fed him and when he has eliminated. There's an app I really like called Puddle and Pile-I will also link to this in the show notes, and you can tap it when your dog pees, when your dog poops, and when you feed your dog and it starts to learn their timing for you. So it'll start reminding you, “Hey, you know, it's been X number of hours since you fed your dog, you should probably give him a chance to go.” And you know, every dog is different, some dogs will pee and poop right away after they eat, some dog that's going to take a little while, you're going to have to figure that out about your dog, but this app, I find, certainly can help. Or just a simple log and I'll put a PDF to the house training log that we use at School for the Dogs in the show notes as well.
The last thing I wanted to mention is that what you put in your dog is going to affect what comes out of your dog. And in the next episode, I'm going to be interviewing my good friend, Hanna from Evermore Pet Food and she and I are going to talk about how the food you feed can affect your dog's house training.
The first thing I suggest to any client when they are experiencing any kind of house training plateau or hurdle is to switch up the food. I usually find that the less processed the food, the less pee or poop comes out of my dog. The closer you can get to giving your dog whole foods, the better their body is going to process the food, take out the necessary nutrients and the less waste there is going to be. So that's always worth an experiment. There are plenty of good brands out there. I would suggest going to the frozen food section of your pet store and checking out what they have there that has the fewest possible ingredients and see if that makes any difference in the amount of waste that's coming out of your dog.
So I hope you'll tune into that next episode, which is going to be a conversation about dog food with Hanna. And you can check out the notes for this episode at school, for the dogs.com/podcast.
I'd like to send a Woof Shout Out to my Shih Tzu friend, Violet, who I've known since she was a tiny little puppy back when School for the Dogs was in my living room and she would come for puppy kindergarten with her wonderful human Sharon. Violet, one of my favorite things she does, although everything she does is very cute, but one of my favorite things she does is she spins, I think, exactly 12 times every time she has to pee. She has to circle in this very precise way. And it's great ‘cause you know exactly when she's going to go. It's also funny that she only will pee and poop with certain people. She has to feel very comfortable with you. Like I said, a lot of dog bathrooming habits, I think, can be affected by fear. And for whatever reason, she needs to feel very, very safe with whoever she's with.
Fun Dog Fact of the Day: did you know that the word for a group of pugs is a grumble, a grumble of pugs. It actually comes from the Dutch word for pugs in the Netherlands. They referred to pugs using their word for grumble, I guess, because pugs are pretty cute and grumbling.
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