House Training Your Dog
Training your dog where and where not to go potty
This section will explain why dogs relieve themselves the way they do and it will explain how to train your dog to go to the bathroom in the right place.
Puppies, Dogs and Pee
Some of the first questions dog owners ask themselves when trying to house train their dog is:
- Why does my dog pee where it’s not supposed to?
- What makes dogs pee so frequently?
- Why does it always seem like some dogs are peeing at every corner?
The answer to these questions is simple – it’s because dogs are territorial. Dogs are born with a strong instinct to mark their territory, and they accomplish this by deciding where they should urinate (pee) or defecate (poop).
Dogs were domesticated from wolves, and like wolves, they inherited the trait to mark their boundaries with bodily fluids. They can do this because each dog’s bodily fluids are unique and other dogs can notice the distinction. Dogs will usually urinate at several different areas, so they know where they have been. Each dog can find their way back to where they urinated – this is where their territory was marked. This is called scent-posting.
My Dogs Pee Is Better Then Your Dogs Pee
Once a dog reaches about 8 weeks old, it starts to play the peeing game – that is, it starts to notice and hunt for other dogs scent or their own scent. Once it finds an area that has been previously urinated or defecated on, it want’s to urinate or defecate over it. This (which is also inherited from their wolf ancestors) is how dogs enforce rank over one another. This is a way in which dogs let each other know who the boss is. Wouldn’t it be strange if humans could achieve higher rank over one another by urinating over another human’s urine? Just image how fast you could get promoted –that’s not the case for humans but that’s how it’s done in the dog world.
Training Puppies and Dogs Where Not To Pee
The most important thing to keep in mind before you start training your puppy/dog where and where not to pee, is that dogs (by default) are instinctively going to mark their territory (i.e. where they live… i.e. in your house). They don’t know how not to pee where they live. So training your dog otherwise will take a lot of patience and understanding on your part.
It’s also important to note that your goal is not to undo their instinct and teach them not to mark there boundaries, rather, your goal is to re-direct where they mark there boundaries. That being said, lets get started.
When you first bring your puppy home, the first thing it will do when it hits the floor is pee. Well, that makes sense right? The puppy is in a new strange place, and it’s in their instinct to mark their territory. So, what you need to do is before you bring the puppy into your house on your brand new carpet, or brand new sofa, you should place the dog where they are to relieve themselves.
For example, if you want them to relieve themselves in the yard, then bring them to the yard first before bringing them into the home – or – if you want to have them relieve themselves in a litter box, or on paper, then make sure you have the set up before you get home so you can place the puppy there.
Once you do this, the dog will instinctively want to come back to the place where he or she once was to relieve themselves.
Next-up: Training your dog to pee on command.