Establishing good habits early on in housetraining your puppy is critical. If you allow your puppy to eliminate every where and any where he wants in your home, you will end up with an adult dog who will always have a tendency to want to eliminate in your home. You will have to live with it forever, or go through some time-consuming, tedious retraining later on. A dog is either housetrained or not. There is no such thing as weekly 'accidents.' A truly housetrained dog will NEVER eliminate in your house unless forced to do so or because of illness or excessively long confinement. Don't expect your puppy to be reliably housetrained until it is at least 6 months old.

Puppy Housetraining Do's

-Provide constant access to the toilet area. If you are home, take your puppy there every 45 minutes or less.

If you are not home or cannot tend to the puppy, then you must make sure he cannot make a mistake. It's actually not really a mistake because he doesn't know any better. With young puppies, when the urge comes, they go - it usually doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing. If we didn't put diapers on human babies, they too would soil our carpets and floors. Confine your puppy to a dog-proofed area and line the entire floor with papers. If the weather is nice, the area safe, etc, you can confine the pup to a small pen outside. Don't leave your pup out in the sun, wind, heat or cold. Be sure to provide shelter and water in the confinement area. It's ideal if the pen is set up on dirt, grass, gravel or concrete. The idea is that no matter where the puppy eliminates while confined, it is on something that resembles his toilet area. Your goal is to never allow your puppy to eliminate on carpet, tile, hardwood, or anything that resembles the flooring in your home. Once a habit is established, it is difficult to break, therefore, do not let your pup form bad habits in the first place.

-Praise and reward your puppy each and every time possible for eliminating in his toilet area.

-Feed your puppy at regular times. What goes in on schedule will come out on schedule.

-Use a crate to help your puppy develop self control. Confine him for gradually increasing periods of time when you are home to monitor him.

-Be patient. It can take until the dog is 6 months old for him to be housetrained.

Puppy Housetraining Don'ts

-Do not reprimand your puppy for mistakes. Reprimand has no place in housetraining.

-Do not leave food and water out all day and night for your puppy to eat and drink at whim. Use some common sense here. Obviously if the weather is hot, it is appropriate to give the pup access to water, but if this is the case, then you need to be more alert to the possibility of the pup needing to urinate more frequently.

-Do not allow your pup to eliminate anywhere other than his toilet area.

-Do not give your puppy free unattended run of your house.