Potty Training Your Puppy to Your Entire House
Effectively house training your puppy makes a huge difference in the success of you and your dog living harmoniously together. This is a big deal and we want to help you do it right. So we wanted to share some tips from our favorite online puppy school, Baxter and Bella!
"We start house training a puppy one room at a time. The idea is to keep their living space small enough to set them up for success. We use crates/pens and baby gates to limit your puppy's access to the rest of our home. Once your puppy keeps their current space consistently clean without accidents for at least a week, is ringing the bell in the area consistently to go out, then add another room to their current living space. If they were in the kitchen, add the living room, etc.
(Quick Tip: Use Facebook marketplace to find a small playpen. This works great whether you're inside or outside during those earlier potty training stages! If you can't find one on Facebook click here to find it on Amazon.)
Each time we add more space we take our puppy out to go potty then immediately come inside and have a play session in the new space. Try to spend enough time there, your puppy will need to go out to go again upon which we help them find the bell in the new space. So the first few times you include the upstairs as an included space, you may need to use a leash to walk your puppy to the bell from upstairs until they learn that, "Yep, I must ring the bell no matter where I am in oder to go outside and yes potty must be done outside." (Need to order the bells? Click here.)
Dogs do not generalize like we do so each new environment means behavior must be retaught there. They pick up on the behaviors in the new space more quickly so we repeat this process until our entire house is included. Once they generalize a few new rooms it goes faster. We may introduce the entire basement at once, but we usually wouldn't recommend this until your puppy is at least six months old before we even get to that point. As a timeframe, we wait until after 1 year to completely trust a puppy in our home. Also note, every puppy is unique and we work with each puppy on their level. If they are not ready by one year we keep helping them by limiting their living space until they are ready.
(We love these crates pictured above! They're pretty enough to use as end tables! Click here to find them on Amazon!)
It's never too early, or too late, to begin training! At Baxter and Bella, we have built an entire online doggy school with over 75 lessons planned and field trips to help you teach your dog a variety of awesome behaviors. Need help in this area? Give our online puppy school a try and gain access to personalized advice from our trainers any time you want! Happy training!"
Our families have absolutely loved Baxter & Bella! If you have any questions or want to learn more about it click here.