Housetraining your puppy is one of the first and most important things you should do when you get a new pup for your house or apartment. If you follow these easy steps to house train your puppy you’ll have a housetrained dog within days, as long as your new puppy is not too young and you keep a couple of key points in mind.
You need to remain patient with you puppy whenever you’re trying to her new things. This includes not only teaching her new puppy tricks or other training exercises, but also house breaking your puppy. If you get angry and rub your puppy’s nose in her mess or strike your dog in any way, you’ll only slow down the training process and possible create other behavioral problems in your dog.
Although every puppy is different when it comes to house training, most young dogs are not able to control their bladder very well until usually about 6 months of age. Therefore, you need to take a different approach to training your puppy when they are very young. Part of the early process, when your puppy is under three months old, is really just training yourself. You need to develop a schedule as well as learn to recognize the warning signs that your puppy needs to go.
After your puppy turns three months old, she can hold it a little longer, usually about the number of hours that correspond to her age in months, but a puppy running around the house playing is likely to go at just about any point. Crate training will help in this regard because she will hold it a bit longer in the confines of a crate, but do not overly rely on this.
After six months of age your puppy will have much greater control over her need to go potty and you can usually complete house training in a short period of time. You’ll still need some patience and a solid plan, but you should certainly be able to house train any puppy that is at least six months old.
You can find some good tips on house training your new dog at the article on how to potty train a puppy.