Best potty training technique

[BarbV]

I think the bell is a good idea but we have friends that have done that with their Goldens and they would ring the bell all the time and not because they had to go out side to do anything they just did it to go out side!!!

Yeh, I don't know what the bell accomplishes. When my boys want something, they stand in front of me and stare at me (Bacca puts his head in my lap and pushes his nose at me). They either want food or outside. Depending on the time of day, they either get food or outside.

Ringing a bell makes no difference.

 

[Toffee's Mom]

Of course this is our opinion, but I think you are sending mixed signals: outside or inside? And most puppies, if the crate is just large enough for them to lay down, stand up and turn around and then lay down again, will not potty inside that space. Dogs by their nature do not want to sleep in their own waste.

So, what I have done in the past, is give them a crate "just small enough" to keep them from pottying in the crate. As soon as you open the door to the crate, you must take her outside immediately, because she will go for you if she has been crated and not gone inside the crate. When she does go outside, you have to be a bit silly, and make a BIG DEAL about it. "YEAH!!!GOOD HURRY UP, GOOD GIRL, YOU ARE SUCH A GOOD GIRL" Clap your hands etc... She may be a little confused at the moment, so it could take you a little longer.

Then while you are at home with her and she is out of the crate, I would take her out every 30 minutes. Go to the same place in the yard every time, use the exact same command every time, whatever you decide, we use the command "hurry up" because it will make you feel better when it is pouring down rain and the pupper doesn't get offended because the words are just sounds to her that mean.........pee!!

Also, when you are outside to do her business, I do not do anything else with the pup. I keep my posture casual and loose. I do not allow playing with me and when they start to play with something in the yard, I repeat, "hurry up."

Puppies are easily distracted and easily confused. Just keep picturing yourself in a foreign country where you don't know the language and trying to learn a new job and you soooooo badly want to please your boss.

Also two other things:
1) Puppies usually aren't fully potty trained until about 6 months
2) Overnight digestion slows down, so an 8 hour stretch is not as hard as it seems.

Good Luck! The forum will have a ton of great ideas for you. I always say with time, patience and consistancy, you can train any dog to do anything, and shelties are very intelligent so she will catch on. I promise.

WOW
that is EXACTLY what I do.. to the nth degree, lol Couldn't agree more!!
Trained all my dogs that way, and all of them were able to kind of go potty on command eventually. Toffee (15 month old, now) knows when I am about to go to work, I go outside with him. tell him to pee, hurry up, and then I tell him, not finished yet, go poop... He goes and poops, even tho he wants to hurry to run inside, since he knows there is a cheese treat waiting for him in his Kong for when I leave for work, lol

It's kinda tough in the beginning with taking the dog out every 30 min, etc.. but it WILL pay off fast, since that is when your dog gets to realize what you REALLY expect...
Personally, I kind of hate the pee pads/newspaper idea for those same confusion reasons...

 

[corbinam]

What if you aren't home all day long? I've never used the puppy pads before, so I'm totally confused as to what to do. I will be gone for about 5 hours every day. Would I put the puppy in an area with the pads? I wouldn't want to put the pup in the crate and force her to pee there.

 

[mbfrench]

I would be putting him in an area with the papers or pads,whichever you choose. I have never used puppy pads,so I have really no advice about them. But I would definately not be putting him in a crate with puppy pads.I would think that would confuse them.

We have been at the beach all today,and had a neighbor come in to make sure Earnhardt & Trapp were taken care of.But for potty issues,all she had to do is let them off the sunporch,and out they went to potty.And then they came back in on the porch.

 

[romeosangiovese]

Romeo's potty history is very strange. He was paper trained to do his stuff on a tray indoors (because I had to work and no one's around to supervise and take him out) and he was very good at that. Then he started to mark alot outdoors and poop outdoors, which is good too (less cleaning up for me). Then he decided (ON HIS OWN) to pee into drains in my tiled back yard, and generally poop out there (or outdoors when we go out), which is actually a much better place for him to do his thing and also very clean for me coz I can just hose everything away. He's found his "toilet" I think coz we've removed all the tray downstairs and he's not had an accident at all. So now he only does his thing on a tray indoors when the urge strikes at night, in my room. All other times, it's not where he was trained at all!!

Oh yes, with the ringing of the bell thing. I trained Romeo to ring the bell to my toilet if he wants access to his water bowl. But he must have realised he gets attention when he rings the bell coz he's doing it now even when he doesn't want water, but just wants me to give him some attention. It's annoying!! I keep having to get up from whatever I'm doing to open the toilet door only to find him sitting and looking up at me expectantly like he's saying "now that I've got your attention, let's do something mum!" Sigh.

Corbinam, you could start with paper training first. Line the entire play pen that the puppy is in with newspapers, then after a day or two, remove one sheet exposing a bit of the floor. If the pup pees on the floor instead of the newspapers, cover that bit up again. After a day or 2, remove a sheet again. If the pup has no problems and continues to pee on the newspapers, remove another sheet. If pup pees/poops on floor, cover the floor up to where the accident happened. Eventually you'll be removing a sheet a day until there's only one sheet of newspaper left and the pup is eliminating on it consistently. Slide a tray under that last sheet. After a couple of weeks or so you can introduce the pee pads. First under the newspapers (so the pup is used to the squishy feeling) then half covered with newspapers, then remove the newspapers altogether. You're teaching the pup to remember the flooring under its paws when it pees (newspaper texture), then teaching the pup to remember the location of its pee spot (where the tray is placed). If you are at home to supervise and see the pup doing its thing where it should, lots of praise and treats!! That speeds things up a bit.

 

[Toffee's Mom]

paper an area and close it off with a baby gate... (I did my kitchen) and I put his crate in there as well and left it open, so he could sleep in it.

I just find that if you do this to allow him to do his business inside it tends to take the dog longer because it confuses them and it takes them longer to get the idea of the alert when they have to go outside. Having said that I am alone and work full time, so I completely understand that conundrum!

But after a while the best solution was to hire a neighbour's son! He took Toffee out once every working day for a few months... After I did that the potty training went so much quicker... Best $5 bucks a day I ever spent Plus it got Toffee used to being handled and socialized by different people.

 

[jerros]

If you browse the web you'll find a half dozen potty training techniques.

I'm not a big fan of teaching a dog that it's OK to pee or poop in the house, so the paper training/pad training/indoor potty isn't something I'm aiming to teach my puppy how to use.

I've been using simple reward techniques to teach my new pup that he's supposed to poop and pee outside. And for the most part Vash seems to have the general idea of it down. "I get treats if I pee/poop outside, and I don't if I go inside".

Vash has been testing my patience though, he doesn't seem to pee all at once but splits it up in to 2-3 intervals about 60 seconds apart. So just when you bring him in he's got to go out again. Then he goes outside, gets distracted by sticks, bugs, pine cones, or just lays down and doesn't pee again until you bring him inside. He will whimper and let me know he's got to pee or poop though so I end up in this constant cycle of going outside, coming inside, and going back out again. And even when he's peed 3x and pooped I'm not entirely sure he's done.

Tuesday he regressed a bit after doing so well, but it was mainly because I wasn't paying as much attention to him as I should have been. I'm sure each dog has his own "tells" for when he's got to go potty besides the whimpering/barking. Vash will stop wanting to play fetch, or any other games with me, he'll whimper once or twice, lay down for a little bit, then get up and start sniffing. I discovered this habit of his tuesday after we had a fair number of miss understandings (I think it was about 7), because I thought he was running on empty when he still had 2/3 of a tank.

That said the past two days we've only had one accident in the house, and todays accident was honestly my fault for not listening to him after he lured me outside 6x and didn't pee, I brought him back inside and he started to whimper again and I said something to the effect of "Your seriously going to make me go outside again to play with pine cones?" and turned my head for a split second and that's when he decided to pee on the rug.

I think the biggest thing is to be consistant no matter what technique you use. I've been using a bell from day one on the door trying to teach vash to ring it when he's got to go potty, and he just started to do that today.

As a side note,I found it very useful to take a few days off work (particularly near a holiday) so that I could dedicate some time to learning my puppy's "potty tells", and at least get a good start on potty training the puppy before I have to start doing my 8 hrs a day on the weekdays.