In potty training a puppy, there are several things you need to do, but first here is an essential bit of preparation: Arrange a place in your home where your puppy can be confined when you are not watching him or her, whether you are at work or when you are asleep at night. A crate is the very best choice, and I have information on crate training puppies you can get to by clicking on the picture of the puppy in the crate. Other indoor choices are x-pens, laundry rooms, and bathrooms. Depending on the weather, you may be able to do something out of doors, at least part of the time. Whatever you do, be sure your pup — with his boundless curiosity, abundant energy, and sharp teeth — will be safe there when you aren’t around. Okay, that’s really another topic, but you do need to have a place to leave your puppy before you begin to potty train him. Leave him there as little as possible. You will be cleaning up his messes in this space, because chances are he won’t always be able to hold it.

One more point before we get into the process: your puppy’s body will mature at its own rate, and different breeds tend to mature at different times. Nobody would expect a human baby to be potty trained in its earliest months, and it’s the same with your new friend. I had one puppy, an Australian Shepherd, who never once did his business in our house from the day we got him at eight weeks, but that is very rare. All my other puppies took a lot longer to be full housebroken.

Okay, so the name of the game with house training your puppy is to know when he is most likely to need to go potty and to be sure and take him outside then. When is that?

• Anytime he wakes up, be it after a nap or early (often VERY early) in the morning.
• After he has eaten, within just a few minutes.

So watch him like a hawk at those times and go right outside — or at least, be ready to scoop him up or coax him to run outside with you.

Also, plan on taking him out just before you go to bed. This gives you the best chance of a good night’s sleep! It’s your call whether you get up in the middle of the night to take him out or not. I do, because it does seem to make the potty training process go faster if my puppy doesn’t go in his crate in the wee hours, or should I say wee-wee hours?

Once you get outside, it may take a while. Be patient. Do some exercises or pull a few weeds, so long as your attention is on your dog and you see when he does go potty. By the way, if you want him to use a particular part of the yard, go there. If you don’t have a yard and are walking him on leash in your neighborhood, choose some good places and keep your pup off your neighbor’s prize petunias! I wear a small fanny pack with plastic produce bags from the grocery store for collecting any poop.

Once your puppy pees and maybe poops, praise him warmly. Play a little more before going inside so he doesn’t associate doing his business with having to stop having fun in the yard.

What if you live in an extreme climate or in an apartment where you can’t just run out the door? Or a place that isn’t all that safe? Paper training is another method that can be used in potty training a puppy. I haven’t ever used this method, as I have always had yards when I started my various puppies, but it’s quite useful in many circumstances. For small dogs, there are even devices that you could graduate to where they would do their business most of the time indoors. If you do go that route, just be sure to train them to use the great out of doors as well, in case you are on a car trip or something of the sort!

What about when your puppy does make a mistake in the house? Just quietly clean it up in a matter-of-fact manner. Just about any pet supply store will have enzyme cleaners — there are numerous brands — that will cut the odor and thus reduce the change of the puppy picking the same spot over and over. Do not scold your puppy, as he really won’t understand. But if you happen to catch him in the act, firmly say NO! and take him outside.

Well, in a nutshell, that’s all there is to it. I’ve written about this topic in other articles, most notably at my page on potty training dogs, which is pretty much the most popular page I’ve written on this site! But it’s such an important topic for the for the future well-being of your new little friend, that I’ll probably keep writing now and then about potty training a puppy. Adult dogs really need to be potty trained, housebroken, or housetrained — whatever you want to call it!– to have a good life. So be patient and keep at it.

For more detailed information and lots of great tips on potty training a puppy, I really like a downloadable ebook by Martin “Scoop” Olliver which spells out how to choose whether to use the direct method where you take the puppy outside for his training or to use the paper training approach. Then there is a step-by-section for either approach. So whether you are house training a puppy indoors or out, you can just print out the pertinent pages of the ebook if you want to. His website explains about using ebooks, if you haven’t done that before. To see what others say about his guide to potty training a puppy or adult dog, just click on the image:

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Here’s a little video I posted on youtube not long ago. It’s called “Potty Train Your Puppy” and covers the basics.

Oops, it’s actually called “Potty Training Puppies” on the video itself. Well, you get the general idea! While I’m updating, I’ll say that this video has been viewed almost 3,000 times in the 10 weeks it’s been up. That’s a lot of people with puppies!

[tags]potty training puppy, puppy training[/tags]

This video shows some of the ways you can housetrain a puppy using a clicker:

Every now and then I get an email from someone who is having problems with crate training. Here are bits from the most recent one:

We just recently got a new puppy and are trying to crate train it. We put him to bed (in his crate) when we go to bed, and then let him out in the morning to do his thing and run around a bit. Then when we leave for work we put him back into his crate where he stays until the kids get home from school and let him out again.

My problem is that i am constantly (twice a day) having to change his bedding as he both poops and pees in his crate. I thought that maybe putting an exercise pen up for him during the day would be better but several friends have told us NO!

What would be the best solution for this as we don’t want him to think of his crate as a “bad” place?

Well, it’s always risky to guess about a situation without knowing all the details, but to me it seems that it’s time to think outside the box… um, crate. Here are some thoughts…

Many problems of this sort can be handled by paying a lot more attention to the puppy’s bathroom needs. You are clearly already being very conscientious but if you take your attention to an even more intense level for a few days or weeks, you may be able to solve the problem completely.

On the weekends and during the night, you can get an idea of just how long the puppy can hold it. Different breeds mature at different rates, and individual dogs will vary too. We once had an Australian Shepherd pup who could hold it all night from the first night we got him, at 9 weeks (gloat), but that is unusual.

Say you discover that your little pup can go about 4 hours. (Review my potty training puppies page here for a suggested routine.) That means you’ll do best if someone can come in once during the time all your family is gone. This would be nice for the puppy anyway, since he is likely pretty lonely. A trusted neighbor, a paid pet-sitter or dog walker, or one of those friends who is telling you not to use an X-pen are all possibilities. They would take him out for a chance to pee or poop, play with him for a few minutes or longer, and perhaps take a pre-stuffed Kong out of your freezer to coax him back into his crate before they leave.

This also means that a middle of the night potty stop outing should take place. Set an alarm clock if you are heavy sleepers.

Seems to me that what you want is to break the habit of using the crate for a bathroom as quickly as you can. I personally would consider combining the crate with an X-Pen, and putting newspapers down in the pen. If the dog is tiny relative to the crate, maybe you can define two spaces in it, but I am guessing this is not the case from your description. Or if you happen to have a mudroom or other small and totally puppy-proof space (or can invent one somewhere in your home), you could put papers down in it and have the crate in there with the door open.

If you begin to think this is going on longer than it should (of course, it already feels like that!), then be sure to consult your veterinarian. It all sounds pretty normal so far, though.

So in a nutshell, I’m suggesting closer management and experimenting more with the size of his space. Best wishes!