Do Over Dogs by Pat Miller

Author:Pat Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dogwise Publishing

You can use a tether—as long as you’re there to supervise—to prevent housetraining accidents and keep your Do-Over dog out of all kinds of trouble.

You can rely on a dog’s instinct to keep his den clean as the basis for housetraining. Your “den” (home) is huge compared to a dog’s natural den, so your canine family member, until he learns otherwise, sees nothing wrong with using part of your vast empire as his bathroom. A crate appropriate to your pup’s size—big enough for him to stand up, turn around, and lie down in—is a perfect den. He won’t want to soil it, he will let you know when he has to go out, and he’ll learn how to “hold it.”

Along with the use of crates (discussed earlier), I recommend the “umbilical approach” to housetraining puppies and adult dogs. This means that your dog is always either in a crate or pen, on a leash attached to you (or restrained nearby on a tether), under the direct supervision of an adult or responsible teen, or outdoors, until he can be trusted with house freedom.

If your Do-Over Dog shows any evidence of not being fully housetrained, establish a daytime routine—go out with your dog every one to two hours. If you want him to use a particular bathroom area of the yard, always take him on leash to this same spot for bathroom breaks. Don’t just send him out to “do his business” on his own. You won’t know if he did anything or not, and you won’t be able to reward him for doing the right thing. Go with him. When he urinates or defecates, click your clicker or tell him “Yes!” and feed him a treat. Be sure to wait until he’s just about empty—if you interrupt his flow with a “click” you may think he’s empty when he’s not. Then play with him for a few minutes before bringing him indoors, as a reward for eliminating. If he doesn’t go, bring him back in, put him in his crate, and try again in a half-hour or so. When you know he’s empty you can give him some relative-but-still-supervised freedom for twenty minutes to a half-hour. Then he goes back under wraps.

If he makes a mistake indoors, do not punish him after-the-fact. It’s your mistake, not his. He won’t even know what he is being punished for! Quietly clean it up, using an enzyme-based product designed for clean up of pet waste, and vow not to give him so much freedom. If you must spank someone with a rolled up newspaper, hit yourself in the head three times while repeating, “I will watch the dog more closely; I will watch the dog more closely; I will watch the dog more closely.”

If you catch him in the act, calmly interrupt him with a cheerful, “Oops! Outside!” and take him outside to his bathroom spot. Again, do not punish him. If you do, you’ll only teach him that it isn’t safe to toilet in front of you; he’ll learn to run to the back bedroom to do it.

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