Toilet Training Tips for the New Puppy Parent
Much as getting a rescue dog is a wonderful thing, an adult dog or older puppy doesn't automatically come fully toilet trained. Would you believe that most dogs that we think are toilet trained actually aren't? You see, there are 2 aspects to toilet training; the appropriate play to go (which is, understandably, everyone's priority) and bladder control (the ability of a dog to hold on until they're ABLE to go to the toilet) - most dogs don't have that. On top of that there are so many different toilet training techniques out here that it sets your head spinning!! Mutts with Manners likes to have a puppy training lesson shortly after pup comes home (from 48 hours afterward is the ideal) so that we can find the toilet training technique that suits you - there are techniques that give you fast results (but are VERY labour intensive) right down to the techniques which take very little effort (and can take a VERY long time). Sadly we haven't yet found a technique that's fast AND easy but when we do, you'll be the first to know!
The other thing that you need to think about with toilet training is where you want to train your dog to toilet. Most of us want our dogs to wait until we take them for walks so that they'll toilet on grass, but when we're first teaching toilet training we put them on wee mats. Now, wee mats are a VERY handy puppy training (and toilet training) tool BUT they feel an awful lot like carpet. What we're talking about is 'textural similarity'. That means, let's toilet train our pups (and older dogs) on the same sort of texture that we want them to toilet on when they're older. If you want them toileting on grass, go to the hardware store and buy some fake turf - something that's longish like grass - so they get a feel for what they'll be toileting on. So get some wee mats, put some nice long fake turf on top and you've set up a toilet training situation that makes it much easier for your puppy's toilet training to succeed!
This is 8 week old Sage. Her mum as a great set up with puppy pen and wee mats - which are very helpful in toilet training your puppy - but not when they only want to tear them up.
