You are now home with your puppy. You are on the right track. You are prepared and ready.
Your pup is amazing because you are implementing great structure, routine, boundaries, feeding rituals, bedtime rituals and potty rituals (all things we teach you in our Pillar of Pack Leadership Academy and Pawsitive Start Puppy Club).
These are the pillars that we live by at APBC. Your pup’s out of crate time is filled with short doses of purposeful activity, like play with toys, short walks, tethering to you for short periods of time, being exposed to new sights and sounds, working basic obedience through fun games.
You are making sure that you have also incorporated some ‘outside the house’ time during that ‘out of crate time’ to give access to water and potty breaks. Your pup’s ‘in house’ time happens daily and is 100% supervised and ON LEASH at all times. RIGHT!
If you are not doing all those things…you need to be.
Here’s the truth, If a pup goes to potty while you are watching, that is a human supervision issue. You need to SEE the potty signs BEFORE they happen for you to be able to successfully get that pup out to the potty spot.
If you are having some issues, know that GREAT structure with crate time and great rituals usually fixes it. However, for those in need of some extra help,
I have a great strategy that I call my IN/OUT/IN METHOD.
This method gives help to new puppy owners that are having challenges and need some extra assistance. This is for our peeps and pooches that are having trouble and find that their pup is tempted to want to go potty in the house within minutes of coming into the house after being outside.
Even though your dog is outside, he may, or may not, actually go to the bathroom. He may mark a bit, or not even go at all, and the minute you want to have them come in, they tinkle. Even though your pup was outside, it’s very probable they haven’t gone ‘real’ potty…they’ve been waiting to come in or playing or been distracted by who knows what.
In they come, they get excited to see you and the family, new smells, etc. and WHAMMO, you have an accident. Picture your kid when he was a toddler…they didn’t want to miss out on any fun so they’d be playing, talking, relaxing, when all of a sudden, they look at you in a panic and say, “I Go Potty” and they mean not that I have to go, but rather that they just went. They waited so long that by the time they realized they had to go, it’s too late!
THIS IS how the IN/OUT/IN method works:
I let the dogs in (on leash of course), they are happy, excited, I pause for a minute, push their butts into a sit, give a scratch under the chin, then we go immediately back out to Potty spot, and I wait, patiently & quietly. After they go (and they usually do) then we really get to come in.
This potty training method works for several reasons.
It lowers the excitement the pup is experiencing upon entering the house and it creates better focus on your part and your pup’s part too BEFORE you come in.
Lowering the excitement is one of the best things you can do when you are having any issue with your pooch, especially potty accidents.
Finally, human supervision is always part of the equation.
These are BABIES…and they require the same amount of supervision that a one year old child did!!!
