Puppy 101 Easy peasy puppy toilet training

EASY PEASY TOILET TRAINING

• Create a den and ensure the den wizards visit regularly see ‘Easy Peasy Den’ exercise sheet

• Prevent your puppy from having free access to your house, have doorsclosed to any nearby rooms or put up baby gates and use the Den if unsupervised

• Use your puppy Timetable (separate sheet)

• Teach your puppy the BEST place to go to the toilet, so they WANT to toilet there

• Frequently, take your puppy to this BEST place including first thing, last thing, after food, after a snooze, after play, after a walk, if any excitement occurs, if visitors come by, hourly, last thing at night

• Stand in the garden silently with your puppy, when they finish going to the toilet, make a big fuss, give them a treat, play a game – it is important that this happens after they have toileted

• Watch what your puppy does just before they go to the toilet, it could be that they start sniffing around and circling just before they go to the loo, this is great information for you, so if when you are indoors yousee your puppy sniffing around like they are going to go to the toilet you can pop them outdoors before they have an accident

• Keep the back door to your house closed as you need to be able to make supervised visits to the garden in order that you can reward as many pees and poops in the right place as possible

• Remember to fill out your puppy timetable sheet, this will help you to make more accurate visits to the garden in future

• If your puppy starts to toilet indoors, don’t worry just pick them up and bring outside to give them a chance to get it right. Record the time of day on the toileting diary

• Clean any accidents with an enzymatic cleaner

• Do not be tempted to punish any toileting accidents as this can lead to more complicated toileting issues,. – your puppy will not understand why they are being punished and may not feel safe toileting with you present, which is a harder problem to solve if that means they are hiding behind your sofa to toilet , or afraid to go in front of you, even when outside

At night

• It is normal for a young puppy to toilet during the night, for the short term you can set an alarm to get up and toilet your puppy during the night. Once bowel and bladder control improve they will be able to hold on until the morning and more importantly will WANT to hold on to earn the rewards from toileting in the BEST place

• Reinforce all toileting outside during the day. Resist treats and praise for outside 1am-5am toileting to avoid your pup getting you up just for treats!