Toilet Training Your Puppy: 7 Helpful Tips from Victoria Stilwell

Have you got a puppy, but are afraid to make mistakes in education, in particular, in toilet training? Do you hear conflicting advice from all sides? 7 helpful tips from world-renowned dog trainer Victoria Stilwell will help you toilet train your puppy quickly and easily.

How to toilet train a puppy?

1. Before you bring your puppy home, be sure to set up a safe place where he can be left alone when you are unable to look after him. It can be a separate small room, a fenced area or a playpen (but not a cage!) If you don’t, the puppy will roam the house, go to the toilet where he can and chew on everything he can get his hands on. This will not only form bad habits in him, but is simply dangerous. Safety first. Be sure to inspect the area where you leave your puppy unattended. It is important to get down to the height of the baby and check whether he really cannot reach dangerous objects or be injured.
2. Many do not dare to walk a puppy before all vaccinations are done, and prefer to accustom the baby to diapers for this time. If you are teaching a puppy to use diapers, start by lining the floor with diapers all over the area where the puppy is left alone. Every few days, remove a couple of diapers, thus reducing the space for the “toilet”. Eventually the puppy will get used to going to the toilet in the same place, so you can leave 1 – 2 diapers.
3. If there is a safe place where the puppy can go for walks even during quarantine, you can train him to wear diapers and to walk outside at the same time. To potty train a diaper-trained puppy outside, take the used diaper outside and wait for the puppy to go to the toilet there. Thus, the puppy will associate with the fact that you can go to the toilet on the street, and this is safe. After a while, when the puppy learns to endure long enough, you can remove the diaper at home.
4. Praise your puppy when he goes to the toilet in the right place.
5. Remember that the puppy can’t stand it for long, so if you’re potty training him outside and you’ve removed the diapers at home, you need to make sure you walk him out often.
6. It is useful to introduce a special word that will refer to the “toilet business” of the puppy. To do this, when the puppy began to relieve himself, say this word. So the baby will form an association between the word and the action. Once your puppy understands what the word means, you can use it to encourage your dog to go to the bathroom at the right time.
7. Stock up on patience. The process of toilet training a puppy takes patience and time, however, if you do it right, you can toilet train your puppy fairly quickly and easily.

You can learn more about how to raise and train a puppy in a humane way in our video course “An obedient puppy without the hassle.”