Its no secret that successful housebreaking takes hard work, a religious routine, and devotion on the part of its owner. And yes, that means that even if you have to get up eight times a night...the end result of having clean carpets and a housebroken dog is a lifelong reward.
One tip I like to share with clients is the use of housebreaking charts. Keeping track of your dog's daily routine is a great way to make sure everything is on track. If your doing things right, you will begin to see strong patterns that will accurately predict when your dog will pee, poop, drink, eat, etc. Its also good for purposes of recognizing if something happens to be off....perhaps your dog is peeing too often which can be a sign of a bladder infection.
Designing a chart is fairly simple. Most programs have a table chart you can use so that you can customize it to fit your own needs. Here's a sample house training chart which should give you an idea of what to include in your own. At the bottom I will eventually have links to some housebreaking chart designs for easy download.
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KEY: The key you use to fill in your housebreaking chart should be something simple and short hand so that it fits onto one piece of paper. Things you should denote on your chart are:
- Urination/Pee
- Defecation/Poop (note if it was firm/loose/abnormal/etc)
- Food (note if they didn't finish eating)
- Water - if your restricting water acess at certain times
- Playtime (do they have to potty right after playing?)
- Confinement (what times they are crated/supervised)
- Accidents - make a note in another color pen if there was an accident
- Sleep - keep track of how many hours they are sleeping
Keep as many notes as possible during your first couple weeks of house training your puppy. It may seem like a pain but in the long run, it will hopefully give you an idea of where mistakes are being made and how to make housebreaking successful. When talking to owners who are having difficulties with housebreaking, I can often identify the problems with their routine in just speaking with them. House training relies on a lot of common sense so use your charts and analyze them and hopefully you will have more success with house training your puppy or adult dog.
