 House Training puppies....
I promised I would post the techniques I used to make potty training easier for puppies. I want to just say that as breeders, I think we have an obligation to start right from the beginning training puppies to become good family members. One of the most important things you can do is to make house training as easy as possible. With that in mind, I did some research and I have to say that this was not my idea but a compilation of ideas I had read about on other sites. When the pups are first born, the mom potties them but once the reach about 3 weeks they start moving around and no longer want to go potty where they sleep but start moving to the farthest spot away from where they sleep. With that in mind, I used artificial grass in 1/3 of the whelping box. The 1/3 that was farthest from their "bed". As they grew out of their whelping box and into an xpen, the artificial grass moved with them, taking up about a quarter of the xpen. Finally they moved to a small room in my house blocked off with the xpen and the artificial grass (now using the potty patch) became a small area about the size of a door mat in one corner of the room not too close to where they sleep or eat. These puppies use that grass mat 100% of the time when they are blocked in the kitchen. When they have free run of my downstairs they occasionally go potty on my door mat which is close to the grass mat and a similar color. (my fault - I should have thought that out a little better when I bought it.) I never ever yell at them if they have an accident. If I can catch them about to go on the wrong mat, I move them to the correct grass mat and praise them. If I catch them going on the grass mat on there own (and I do alot), I praise them alot.
That's really all I do.
Does anyone else have any ideas they would like to share? I think it's really important for these guys to have some basic training before going off to their new homes..... |