Part 1: BACKGROUND:

The beginnings of housetraining your puppy should begin with the breeder!  Finding a breeder that has put extra effort into laying good foundations for future potty training is an important step in your housetraining success.

Here’s how we prepare our puppies for successful potty training in their new homes.

Our puppies are born in a whelping box, a nice warm area, lined with soft blankets over a foam mattress, which is very comfortable for mom and puppies for the first few weeks of life.
Once the puppies are up on their legs and moving around reliably, we’ll remove the whelping box and the foam, and give them a slightly larger area.  This area is mostly blanket, with paper/pee pads on one end, near where food and water dishes are located.  As the puppies start to explore and move around, they’ll get used to the feel of the paper, and some of their potties will happen on this paper. 
Next, we’ll shrink the size of their bed.  When a puppy wakes up from sleep, he’ll get up and walk a little bit before he takes a pee.  Likewise, after a meal, he’ll usually wander around for a little while, and potty before he heads back to the sleeping area.  So we simply take advantage of this natural instinct by positioning the elements of bed, paper, food and water, so that most of the time, potties will happen on the paper.  The other part to this is keeping the bed area very clean.  If a puppy pees on the bed, another puppy will come along, smell the pee, and decide that here is a good place to potty too! 

The next step is that we give our puppies access to the doggie door – usually around 4-5 weeks, but dependant on the weather.  After a few days, the puppy will learn to follow mom outside via the doggie door flap, and he’ll explore the potty area outside.  Naturally the smells of what happens there, and also luck, means that he’ll do some of his potty’s outside.  Over the weeks, pottying will happen more and more often outside.  As the puppies are getting bigger, they’ll want to move farther and farther away from their bed when they wake up, and also after a meal – they are going to want to play a bit, sniff around, and this often takes them outside- so while some of the pottying happens inside on the paper, the majority starts to happen outside.  We even give them a larger area inside to play, and their habits of going out mean that they’ll continue to do this.  However – if we give them too much room inside-they’ll start to use part of their inside area instead of outside. Typically, by about 8 weeks of age, all of the pottying is happening outdoors, and we can remove the paper indoors – so they have a bed area, large play area, and they go outside for pottying.

So for when your puppy goes home around 10 weeks – this is great – his instinct is telling him to keep his bed area clean, and he’s doing all his pottying outside, where it’s much easier for us to clean up!  This is a great foundation to being your potty-training process.

Here’s where we require you to do a little bit of preparation before you take your new puppy home:

Go To Part 2: Preparation

© Shelley Klok 2022