Excerpt From My Potty Training eBook
“You can’t change any behavior your dog has if she doesn’t take her lead from you! You can make it perfectly clear that you don’t want her relieving in the house and she might just be saying, “I don’t care! You aren’t the one making the decisions here. I am!” It’s most effective, but not absolutely necessary, to have this piece in place before you start your potty training day. …
One last thing, before we start. There are two messages you have to get across for success in Potty Training:
- THIS IS WHERE I WANT YOU TO RELIEVE!
- I DON’T WANT YOU TO RELIEVE IN HERE!
Message two is the much more challenging to get across. You have to catch your puppy in the act of relieving in the house AND make it clear to her why she is being disciplined to get this message across. Catching your dog in the act is not as tough as it sounds when you know how, even if your dog never relieves in the house in front of you. …
Getting the message across “I don’t want you to relieve in here” can present its own unique set of challenges. Many dog owners that have hired me to help them with potty training tell me that their dog definitely knows that they don’t want her to relieve in the house. They frequently offer as proof an explanation of how their dog starts cowering the minute they walk in the door when she has relieved in the house while they were gone — even before they say or do anything. This does NOT prove that the dog understands that the owner doesn’t want her to relieve in the house! It simply shows that the dog knows that the owner gets mad when she does relieve in the house! In all likelihood the dog has no idea why the owner is getting mad. For all the dog knows she isn’t leaving a big enough puddle! In working with thousands of dog owners over the years, I don’t ever recall seeing an owner catch their dog relieving in the house and NOT running over there yelling, screaming, and waving their arms in an attempt to communicate their frustration to their dog. When this happens, the dog almost always runs away afraid and the opportunity to get the correct message across is lost. For success, you really have to change your view of relieving in the house. Relieving in the house, during the potty training phase of development, is NOT a bad thing. In fact, catching your dog relieving in the house — or at least catching her thinking about it — is the only way to get the message across that this behavior is not allowed.”
