- At our training facility our instructors get to chat
with hundreds of new puppy owners every single month.
And today I'm going to tell you about the four most common,
little oversights that people have,
even when they're doing everything else right,
when it comes to house training.
But those little oversights are
completely de-railing their training.
So we're gonna talk about that today.
I'm Ken Steepe and welcome back to McCann Dogs.
(guitar strum) (puppy bark)
If this is your first time on the channel
and you consider your dog a member of the family,
then you're gonna want to hit that subscribe button.
We publish new videos every single week
to help you spend some quality time with your
four-legged family member.
Let's take care of the easy one first.
And that's supervision inside.
We all know that anytime you're house training your puppy
and you have them out of their crate,
that you need to be monitoring them closely.
If they sneak away while you're playing on your phone
and they have an accident in the house,
that's not their mistake.
It's actually your mistake.
So you need to be sure that
every moment that puppy is out of their crate,
that you are engaged with them,
you're watching them closely for any signs
that maybe they need to go outside.
And that leads to the second thing
that I wanted to talk about.
And that's the routine of going inside and outside.
Before you put your puppy in your crate
for any length of time, they need to go outside.
If you come home from work or you come get your puppy
and you're gonna take them out and have a play session,
you need to immediately take that puppy up
and take them outside.
They're most likely to feel like they have an opportunity
to have an accident in the house,
after they come out of their crate.
And for puppies, a common time to make a mistake
is after a big play session.
So maybe you've played some tug with your puppy,
or you know, played some response to name,
or luring them around,
or teaching them a new trick, or whatever.
Once you've done playing that play session,
take them outside, let them have a piddle.
Then you can bring them back in and put them in their crate
so they can have a rest.
But it's really important that after they've been up
really high and have been really excited,
that as they're coming down, you've given them
the opportunity to go outside
so that they don't have that accident in the house.
Next let's talk about outside supervision.
Now this is a really important one and this is
a very common place for people to make a mistake,
even though they think they're doing everything right.
When you go to take your puppy outside
and allow them to go outside to go for a pee,
the last thing you want to be doing
is sliding open that back door
and allowing them out to the backyard,
even though it's enclosed
and it's safe, unsupervised.
Puppies have really short attention spans
and the last thing your puppy is going to be thinking about
is going pee, if there are leaves blowing around,
or maybe there's kids playing beyond the fence,
or maybe there's a dog in the yard beside yours.
You really don't want to let your puppy
out of that back yard with all those distractions
when you know that your intention is for them
to go outside to have a pee.
So attach your six foot leash
and head outside with your puppy.
You're gonna go to the area that you want them to pee at
in the future.
Maybe you have a section of your yard
or an area around your building that you want your puppy
to go at.
And you're gonna head out directly to that spot
and stand totally still.
You're not gonna engage with the puppy.
You're just gonna let them go out there
and find their spot and then have a pee.
Now, if they still fail to have a pee,
even if you're standing out there with them
and you've been totally quiet,
it's not uncommon for a puppy to, you know,
all of a sudden, have this burst of energy.
So, the best thing you can do at that point
is scoop your puppy up.
After you've given them a long time to have their pee,
you haven't been engaging,
you're just gonna scoop them up and take them inside.
You're gonna put them right back in their crate
and close that door just for a couple of minutes.
Once your puppy realizes that it's not up to them
when it's time to play,
you're gonna take your puppy back out of that crate
and straight back outside, doing the same process as before.
It's really important that your puppy doesn't start to learn
that every time I get to go outside it's really, really fun.
So whether I go pee, or I play with a leaf,
all I wanna do is get out there.
Your puppy needs to know that every time you're
taking them outside to go have a pee,
that they have a job to do.
Now if you have a puppy who's still having accidents
inside their crate, then it's time to take a look at
what's inside their crate.
Puppies can be real opportunists.
So if you put your puppy in a crate with a huge bed
or a great big fluffy blanket,
they're way more likely to have an accident on that.
If your puppy is going through the house training process,
it's best to not have anything in their crate
that they can pee on and then stuff to the side.
Now I know that we all think that we need to have
a great big bed for our puppy so that they're comfortable.
But nowadays, the plastic crates are really comfortable
on the bottom, very flat,
and wire crates also have a plastic tray.
But make sure that there is a flat surface
on the bottom of your puppy's crate
before you decide to take their bedding out.
For us, our puppies sort of
earn the opportunity to have some bedding.
And we might go from a flat, plastic puppy crate
once they've had a couple of weeks of success,
we'll put in like, a beach towel or something like that.
Now if you have any other questions about house training
or unusual situations,
drop them in the comments below.
We have a really active community
and we're always checking our comments section
to see if we can help out our viewers.
Now I really hope you found this video helpful
and I hope it speeds up your house training process.
If this is your first time on the channel,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
We publish new videos every single week
to help you spend some quality time
with your four-legged family member.
That card beside me is actually a playlist
of videos that our Grade One students have found
really helpful and I think you'll find it helpful too.
On that note, I'm Ken, happy training.
(instrumental music)
♪ I know you mean it ♪