How to Raise the Perfect Dog (16 page)

Crystal shares with us the schedule that worked for her with Mr. President, who never had an accident in her house during the week they were rooming together:

• 7:00 a.m.: Let Mr. President out of his kennel. We immediately went to the front door and outside to his designated pee spot. He would pee and I would then put on his leash and we’d walk to his favorite poo spots. He had three general areas that he liked to go poo in.

• If Mr. President didn’t go at this time, he’d go at 8:15 a.m. and vice versa.

• 8:15 to 8:30 a.m.: After Mr. President’s morning feeding I would take him out to go potty again before we got into the car for the morning commute.

• 9:00 a.m.: I’d take Mr. P. on a short walk before we entered the office. Typically he’d go pee again.

• 11:00 a.m.: Mr. P.’s first potty break of the workday (sometimes he’d go poo at this time; if not now, then at 1p.m.).

• 1:00 p.m.: Mr. P.’s second potty break (also my lunch break, so we’d get out of the office and grab a bite to eat with my coworkers and their office dogs).

• 3:30 to 4:00 p.m.: Mr. P.’s third potty break (generally he’d just want to pee about now).

• 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.: I’d take Mr. P. out for a short walk before we got in the car to go home for the night. He’d generally go pee again.

• 7:30-8:30 p.m.: Mr. P. would go out again after his dinner. This is when we’d take our evening walk.

• 9:30 p.m.: He’s in his kennel for the night.

I was very impressed with Mr. President and Crystal for their consistent work during my absence. Remember, this is a three-and-a-half-month-old puppy that adapted right away to a brand-new situation. By your sharing only calm-assertive energy and a positive outlook, your puppy—like Mr. President—will be able to tune into his natural instincts and learn the lessons of housebreaking smoothly.

Keeping your puppy in the confined space or crate in which she’s assigned to stay during the times when you are unable to supervise her is also a huge boon to pain-free housebreaking. “What I try to get through to people,” says breeder and trainer Diana Foster, “is that it’s all about prevention. If you don’t give ‘em a chance to pee on the carpet, they’ll never even know what peeing on the carpet is. And if you keep that up the first few months, little by little you can start to give them more freedom. When our puppies leave our kennel, none of them ever had an accident in the house. We didn’t do anything to them. We didn’t scold them or correct them. We just never gave them a chance to make a mistake.”

BABY GATES

Angel was only eight weeks old when I adopted him and had only just begun his housebreaking experience when I brought him home from Brooke’s. During the miniature schnauzer’s first days at my home, he was a little more hyper and therefore more difficult to house-break than the laid-back Mr. President. Although he was always responsive and attentive to the behavioral cues I sent him, the new environment and all the new friends to play with were perhaps a little too much stimulation all at once for the little guy. He was especially attracted to Jack, the four-year-old Jack Russell terrier in my pack. Having just left his own extended family of miniature schnauzers at Brooke’s, Angel immediately recognized and was interested in a fellow terrier, but unfortunately, Jack is a bit too hyperactive to be an ideal role model for calm-submissive behavior. All these distractions made the normally medium-level-energy Angel a little more excitable in the early days and therefore a little less consistent with his bodily functions at first, even though he had the other dogs’ bathroom behaviors to emulate.

In addition to feeding and exercising the puppies on a regular schedule, setting up a line of baby gates in the garage pointing a clear path to the backyard was a great help in teaching Angel to go outside to pee and poop. This tool has been invaluable for me in keeping so many dogs in my house, garage, and yard. When using baby gates, it’s important to understand that puppies don’t necessarily see them as boundaries (they can be pushed over, or jumped over) unless you teach them that they are boundaries.

COMMUNICATING LIMITS

With Angel, I set up the gates, then stood on the other side of them and waited for him to try to follow me. I used my body language—stepping forward strongly, putting out my hand, and most important, projecting a blocking energy—to communicate to the puppy that he should not cross the threshold of the gates. When he tried to nudge the gate in order to push it over, I moved toward him even more assertively, establishing an invisible frontier between him and the gates on both sides. With this motion and this energy, I am very clearly communicating to him that he is not allowed to get too close to the gate, even on his side.

I repeated this exercise several times, even though Angel is an amazingly quick study, and I continued to reinforce it again over the next several days. Within three days, Angel totally respected my concept of a borderline that he could not cross. Dogs naturally respect “invisible boundaries”—much more so than man-made ones. They set invisible limitations for one another all the time by using energy and body language. But you must take the time and patience to reinforce the rules until your puppy internalizes them.

Cesar using baby gates to set boundaries

ROLE MODELS

One of the best ways to teach a puppy about proper bathroom etiquette is to let an older dog lead by example. When Junior first arrived at our home, he immediately learned the good habits of the smaller dogs living at our home back then—Coco the Chihuahua, Molly the dachshund, Sid the French bulldog, and Minnie the Chihuahua-terrier mix. That’s also how he learned to use wee-wee pads right away—a big help to me for when I wanted to bring my handsome new pit bull on the road with me and the
Dog Whisperer
crew. When Blizzard came along, Junior was able to impart his good manners to the new little yellow Lab puppy in the family, who in turn was able to influence Angel and Mr. President, both of whom were perfectly housebroken within a couple of weeks. That’s a beautiful thing—generation after generation of dogs, all teaching one another to be balanced.

WEE-WEE PADS

Many puppy owners, particularly puppy owners who live in cities, don’t want to go through the chore of taking a puppy outdoors five or six times a day, so they choose to use wee-wee pads as a shortcut to housebreaking their dog. Though wee-wee pads are a wonderful invention and my dogs use them all the time when we travel, it’s very important that puppies learn to eliminate outdoors as well as behind walls. Your home becomes a big “den” to your dog, and it’s not natural for them to eliminate inside the confines of their own personal nesting space. Conditioning a dog to eliminate
only
inside the house goes against your puppy’s inborn nature. That’s why puppy mill puppies like Georgia Peaches continue to have accidents throughout their life span. Often when people start by conditioning puppies to depend on wee-wee pads alone, they are shocked when the dog won’t eliminate outdoors. The truth is, you the owner have created the situation by stifling the puppy’s own natural instinct not to eliminate where he lives.

The best way to incorporate wee-wee pads into your housebreaking routine is to set them out only at times when you won’t be able to supervise. Set out four pads at first, in order to zero in on exactly the part of the pad where the puppy will relieve himself. As the puppy begins to use them correctly and to refine and mature his behavior, you can remove the pads until there is only one left, at exactly the spot where he will go every time.

In order to attract the puppy to the pad, find a piece of grass or dirt with the scent of urine or feces from another dog on it and place it on the pad. This may sound distasteful to you, but the presence of another dog’s excrement will stimulate your puppy’s brain to pee right over it. Eventually you won’t need to do this, once the puppy is conditioned to the pads.

In the area of my house or hotel room where I keep the wee-wee pads, I always use an air filter to make sure the scent doesn’t travel, and I make sure to give the dogs a place to sleep that is far away from the pads, since dogs, like humans, like their bedroom and their bathroom to be in distinct locations. As soon as I get up, I roll up the used pads and immediately mop up the floor beneath the pads so there is no more scent. This is a
must
for using pads, newspapers, or anything you put on the floor for the puppy to relieve himself on:
always
replace the used pad immediately and clean up the floor underneath, because a dog doesn’t want to pee on a place where he himself has already peed. In addition to helping train your puppy to use that spot again, you will be keeping your own environment clean and sanitary.

DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY

Housebreaking is not rocket science, but if an accident does happen, it’s important not to get upset or frustrated. A dog isn’t wetting on the floor to hurt your feelings, to get even with you, or because he’s angry at you, nor is he telling you that all your previous housebreaking efforts are failing and that you have to go all the way back to step one. Early on, accidents are a part of the process, and the only correct response from you is
patience
. Repeatedly making a big deal out of a housebreaking mishap is one of the worst things you can do, because you will be teaching your puppy that if he pees, he can produce a certain response in you. No matter how young or how old your dog is, he is always reading your emotional state and energy and constantly updating himself about exactly what makes you tick. When your puppy does something that triggers a negative emotion in you, it makes you weak in his eyes, so the puppy learns, “Hey, this is an easy way to control this human!” Later, if the puppy is bored or lonely or has nothing else to do, he can just pee, and you’ll provide him with a little gratuitous entertainment. Just like kids, dogs will sometimes choose negative attention over no attention at all.

And never, ever correct or punish! Don’t buy into the old-school notion that you should push a puppy’s nose into his excrement or hit him if he happens to go in the house. This makes absolutely no sense to him. Instead, remain calm and assertive, and immediately bring the puppy outside to where he is supposed to relieve himself (or to the puppy pad, if that is the only option at the time). If you catch a puppy in the act, use a light touch or a sound simply to distract or snap him out of it, then remove him to his spot outside and wait until he relaxes and finishes his business. You are using the opportunity of your puppy’s making a mistake as a chance to reinforce the behavior that you
do
want from him. That way you are telling the puppy, “It doesn’t matter what you do. In every situation, I will always have the right answer and I will always share a calm energy.” That kind of neutral but reliable response is the nature of true leadership.

Done correctly, housebreaking should not be a turbulent production but just a matter of putting a little extra work into getting your puppy on a schedule during the first few weeks after he arrives at your home. Don’t let unnecessary stress over this very natural, uncomplicated process taint any of the joy surrounding your new dog’s puppyhood.

DOS AND DON’TS OF HOUSEBREAKING

1. DO bring the puppy outside first thing in the morning, immediately after eating each meal, after he awakens from a nap, and after long play sessions.
   

2. DO bring the puppy to the same general area outdoors each time.
   

3. DO supervise your puppy closely! You are investing a lot of time in these first months to establish a lifetime of good behaviors. Keep your puppy with you as much as possible. If you can’t be with him, put him in a safe, enclosed area or in his crate. If you think you might forget about your puppy’s “call of nature,” set a timer to remind yourself.
   

4. DO remain consistent! Daily consistency is the key to good habits. Feed and walk your puppy at around the same time every day. Remember, dogs don’t understand the concept of weekends or holidays. If you want to sleep late on a Sunday, take your puppy out first, then go back to bed.
   

5. DON’T punish a puppy for an accident or do anything to create a negative association with his bodily functions! Stay calm and assertive and quietly remove the puppy to the place where you want him to go.
   

6. DON’T potty-train a puppy on wee-wee pads alone. It’s not natural for a dog to relieve himself inside his “den.” Make sure you alternate between outdoor and indoor bathroom habits.
   

SETTING RULES, BOUNDARIES, AND LIMITATIONS

Many owners will be all too tempted to shower their puppy or new dog with toys, petting, and nonstop attention; to give her table scraps or treats whenever she begs; and to give her the run of the house right away. To our human minds, this is what we do to show a dog that we “love” her. The problem is, your new puppy is coming directly from her first family—her mother and littermates—where “love” equaled order and organization. If she was also raised by a conscientious breeder, she has probably already begun to learn and internalize her very first set of human regulations. “The dog already knows it needs to live with rules and boundaries, as this is all it has known since birth,” Diana Foster explains. “This dog is very content, secure, and conditioned to living with certain rules and restrictions.”