Ah, house training your dog. Don’t you just love the idea? If you’ve ever had to go through this experience, then you know how challenging it can be. If you’ve never done it before, I’ve got great news. By learning some basic essential knowledge, you’ll soon discover that it doesn’t have to be as difficult or challenging as you were initially expecting.
As far as house training goes, crate training is generally accepted to be the most effective and efficient means of house training a puppy in a short space of time. Crate training is essentially the use of a small indoor kennel (the crate) to confine your young puppy when you’re not actively supervising her.
Dogs, like all animals, have certain built-in instincts. One of those is that in most cases they refuse to soil the area where they normally sleep. Since your puppy will be spending a large portion of her early life inside the crate, she’ll by nature “hold it in”, and not go to the bathroom until she’s been let out of the crate (and placed outside).
As a general guideline, it’s more cost-effective for you to choose a crate that’s big enough for her to grow into. It should be big enough for the adult dog to stand up comfortably without crouching, turn around in, and stretch out – but no bigger (so that she doesn’t choose one part as her bed, and one part as her toilet!)
Unless you’ve got a puppy that will remain small even after being fully grown, you’ll have to place some kind of divider inside the large crate that will temporarily block off some of the inside of the crate from being used until she’s big enough to need the extra space. Otherwise, the extra space might be used as a bathroom space, and that defeats the whole purpose of crate training.
Crate training works like this: your puppy is in that crate at all times unless she’s sleeping, eating, outside with you going to the toilet, or being played with (active supervision). You’ll need to be consistent, or else it won’t work: you can’t let your puppy wander off through the house unless you’re focusing your complete attention on her. If you allow her access to the house before she’s thoroughly house trained, you’re basically encouraging her to relieve herself inside – and remember, each time she does this, it’ll be easier for her to do it again (and again and again ).
The maximum amount of time that a puppy can be crated at one time is figured out using the following equation: her age in months, plus one. So, a three-month old puppy can be crated for a maximum of four hours. However, this is likely to be physically pretty uncomfortable for her (not to mention hard on her emotionally and psychologically: it’s tough being cramped up with nothing to do), so you should really take her out at least once every two hours during the day. If she’s sleeping, of course, just let her sleep until she wakes up naturally.
Training a puppy using the crate training method is not an overnight solution. It can take up to two months maximum, usually less, for this process to work. But that a short time considering the number of years she’ll be part of your family. As you progress with your crate training, you can begin to reduce the amount of time the puppy is in the crate, but make sure you continue to monitor her while she’s not in the crate. After all that hard work, you’d hate to start back one square one again because she starts going to the bathroom in the house.