Dog & Puppy Housetraining aka Potty Training

Training your dog to eliminate where you want him to can be a very frustrating experience. I get calls all the time saying that "my dog is not potty trained." Dogs know how to pee and poop -- you don't need to teach them to do that. What they don't know is *where* you want them to go, and they do have to be taught. Remember, *you* didn't pop out of your mother's womb knowing to use the toilet in the bathroom!!! Someone spent time training you......

Adult Dogs

Dogs pee and poop where you don't want for several reasons. We need to determine why your dog is having elimination problems in order to help both him and you. So if you are doing "everything the books say to do" and it's still not having an effect, then the reason may not be simply incomplete housetraining.

House soiling, as with any behavior issue, may stem from a medical problem. Make sure your vet has thoroughly examined your dog (including a full blood panel, fecal exam, and urinalysis) to rule out anything physically wrong with him.

Click here for a quick summary of the stages a puppy and dog go through before being reliably potty trained, house trained, housebroken, or whatever you want to call it! (I'm not particularly fond of the word "housebreaking" -- we're not teaching your dog to break anything ... just to do what you want him to do where you want him to do it.)

Here's a quick summary of how to house train your dog – Take him where you want him to go when he has to go and then reward him when he goes there.

Our program for housetraining for adult dogs is a two-hour session where I come to your house. Before we meet, you fill out a questionnaire which gives a history of what you have tried in the potty training process and also asks other questions about housetraining to determine if it is truly a housesoiling issue or something else.

• During our meeting, we discuss your answers in more detail, and I ask follow-up questions. We also talk about your specific situation, and then we personalize a housetraining program specifically for you and your dog. The fee for this is $295. If you take the Doggie Manners private obedience lessons or the combination program, then we incorporate the housetraining program into the private session at no extra charge.

Why does this program cost more than the Puppy Program? Because with puppies, we're basically working on a clean slate. With adult dogs, we need to rule out other factors to make sure that it is truly an incomplete housetraining problem and not some other issue and also deal with their history -- the bottom line is that it takes more time.

Puppies

Dogs need two things to be reliably potty trained: muscle control and mental control. Puppies generally don't have either. You may have had a previous puppy who "got it" right away, but THIS puppy doesn't. This is a different puppy! This puppy may have other areas to excel but may need more help (and time) with the potty training.

We have three programs for puppies:

• Our new Puppy Potty Training program is one hour, and we give you general housetraining guidelines and then personalize a program for you. We discuss only potty training issues, and the fee is $175.
• If you would like to discuss other puppy issues in addition to the potty training, then we can extend the program for another hour, and the fee for two hours is $295.
• We also have a combination of one private 90-minute lesson (where we will discuss potty training and other issues) and the four puppy kindergarten classes, and the fee begins at $295. Find your city under the navigation buttons on the left for the fee.

Please call 1-877-7-DOGGIE for more information.

Return to top