It's one of the most common questions we see on our Dog Health Care Forum at KennelVet.com House-training your dog is a simple procedure if done right. This article will be a basic HOW TO GUIDE for housetraining your new pup or adult dog.

The single most important aspect in housetraining your dog or pup is for them to understand the right place to eliminate. How is your dog to know that he shouldn't do that in the house? Ah, and this is the key to housetraining, you need to teach, or in other words, train him where it’s appropriate and inappropriate. And equally as important, you must communicate this to the dog in a manner that it can understand.

Does your dog or pup know he is being praised or rewarded? Since a new pup or dog may not know your voice or the words you use to reward and praise him YET, the first step is for the two of you to learn how to communicate praise. It's a good bet that the new dog or pup doesn’t understand words yet   so the tone of your voice and a dog treat will do the trick. If you or your dog haven’t been communicating, then please read the BASIC TRAINING FOR YOUR DOG on this site.

Everyone we have talked to from the experts to the home owner that has successfully trained his dog, all agree that there are 3 habits that an owner needs to practice consistently to successfully house train their dog.

Highly successful housetraining tips from the experts at KennelVet:
1) Reward the dog each and every time it eliminates in the right spot
2) If the owner is at work or away from home, the dog should be kept confined to prevent them from developing a habit of soiling the house.
3) Reprimand with instruction when the dog makes a mistake in the house. Don’t just punish the dog, show him where the right place is so every mistake is a learning experience.

HABIT 1: Reward the dog each and every time it eliminates in the right spot.

It can not be overemphasized how important it is for you to praise the dog each and every instance that it does the right thing in the right place. So when the pup or dog goes outside, give them a treat and praise them and try to use the same exact praise phrase every time. When you are at home, it will be important to keep your eyes, ears and nose on the lookout for when the dog needs to eliminate. Get in the habit of going on walks at a predetermined schedule. Most dogs will let you know that they have to go outside, don’t hesitate at all and remember to reward them when they do go outside.

HABIT 2: If you’re away from home, then the dog should be kept confined.

If you’re at work or away from home, don’t let the pup or dog have full run of the house. It will develop the habit of indiscriminately leaving piles and puddles everywhere inside. Until the dog can be trusted, it should be confined to a single room or a house training crate / cage.

Patti, a friend of mine, was told that a great way to house-train a dog was to put it in a crate. She got a big cage and lined it with newspaper, in went her pup, some food and water. When she got home from work, her dog pooped in the cage and got all messy. Was the advice bad about crates she asked me?

Crate training is one of the fastest ways to housetrain your dog or pup. Patti’s problem was that her pup was trained to eliminate on newspaper so the crate was full of it, how was he to know that it wasn’t ok to poop on the paper in the cage. Eliminate the paper in the cage and make sure you use a divider panel in the cage to get the right size crate space for your pup.

Training a dog in a properly supplied and managed crate is not cruel. Dogs have a natural instinct in the wild to find a den (about the same size as crates) and to keep its den clean. If you keep his crate clean, then your pup will have a natural instinct to also keep it clean and that’s the first step in training him to treat the whole house as his clean den. For more information read the HOW TO CRATE TRAIN YOUR DOG OR PUP at KennelVet.com

HABIT 3: Reprimand with instruction when the dog makes a mistake in the house.

If you still find your dog making mistakes in the house, reprimand them but do it by letting them know immediately that they eliminated in a bad place. Use a sanitary way of picking up the poop and bring it and the dog outside, and show him a good place to do it (use praise words outside.) Most mistakes people make is to just punish or yell at the dog when they come back home for its mistake in the house. The dog may learn that it is bad to eliminate when you are at home, so it will instead eliminate at times when you’re away from home. That’s not the right message to send.

Since a lot of time has passed when the dog eliminated in the house, your punishment long after the bad deed has been done, will not be understood by the dog. So remember to reprimand immediatly and with instruction.

Its important to follow these 3 habits to successfully house train your dog or pup. Please let us know at KennelVet.com if this information was useful and if you have any other questions. We will keep updating this HOW TO HOUSETRAIN YOUR DOG OR PUP GUIDE with your questions and comments.

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