Puppies learn very quickly with proper instruction. The first few days in a new home are extremely important for your puppy and the precedents you set now will last a lifetime.
Training Puppy the First Week
When your puppy comes home, it is important
to be prepared for many training opportunities ...
Puppy training basics during the first week the puppy is home is critical. It is obvious that you need certain physical items such as a dog bed or crate, food and water bowls, puppy chow, collar, leash, toys, etc. Equally as important, all family members must decide and agree on routine, responsibility and rules.
The first few days are extremely important. Enthusiasm and emotions are up. Everyone wants to feed the puppy, play with the puppy and hold the puppy. Pre-established rules are easily broken. Everyone agreed that puppy will sleep in her crate but as soon as she's home, someone melts and insists that puppy will sleep in bed. Everyone previously agreed not to let puppy jump up on them, but in the excitement, no one even notices that puppy is jumping up. No one sleeps the first night. Puppy wins and gets to sleep in bed. The next morning we find puppy has eliminated all over the bed. So the following night puppy is banned to her crate and screams all night. No one sleeps tonight either.
Grouchiness sets in; enthusiasm is down. No one wants to get up at the pre-agreed upon early morning feeding time. How are we going to housetrain puppy? How are we going to sleep with her constant whining?
Your new puppy has just been taken away from her mom and littermates. She is vulnerable and impressionable. What she needs now is security and routine. Set up a small room to be her very own special haven for the next couple of months. Paper the entire floor and put her food/water bowls and bed in one corner. Scatter her toys everywhere.
Play with her quietly and gently. Don't flood her with attention and activity. If she looks like she wants to sleep, leave her alone. Puppies need lots of sleep.
Decide who is responsible for feeding and cleaning up after her. Don't deviate from the schedule. Routine is especially important for your puppy. Don't spend all your time with her. If she is going to be alone during the day or night, she needs to start getting used to it now. If she wakes up from a nap and whines, resist the urge to run in and comfort her.
What To Expect House Training a Puppy
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Unless you can monitor your puppy 24 hours a day, don't expect the house training process to be completed until your puppy is at least 6 months old. It's normal for a young puppy to be a little 'input-output' machine. Since puppies are growing and developing rapidly at this stage, they eat more food, burn up more energy and seem to need to eliminate constantly! They also have not yet developed bowel and bladder control, so they can't 'hold it' as long as adult dogs.
House Training When You Are NOT Home
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Confine your puppy to a small, 'puppy-proofed' room and paper the entire floor. Put his bed, toys and food/water bowls there. At first there will be no rhyme or reason to where your pup eliminates. He will go every where and any where. He will also probably play with the papers, chew on them, and drag them around his little den.
Most puppies do this and you just have to live with it. Don't get upset; just accept it as life with a young puppy. The important thing is that when you get home, clean up the mess and lay down fresh papers.
What to do when Puppy is screaming and whining in the crate.
First make sure your puppy does not have to urinate or defecate and that she is not thirsty or excessively hungry. If in doubt, take him to his designated toilet area before you begin.
Make yourself comfortable because in the beginning this can be a time consuming process, but each repetition brings results faster and faster until the exercise no longer needs to be done. If done properly, it should take no longer than a week for your puppy to feel secure in his crate and no longer howl and whine.
This process will not work if you do not provide your puppy with regularly scheduled exercise and play. If your puppy has excessive, pent up energy because you haven't provided an outlet for that energy, then this exercise will be futile.
Having previously performed the Chill exercise with your puppy will make this training process infinitely easier. See the video on how to teach your puppy to Chill.
The basic idea is to comfort and sooth your puppy into falling asleep and then once asleep, placing her back into her crate. Sometimes the puppy will stir a bit when you move her from your lap to the crate, but simply stroke and calm her inside the crate before shutting the door. Sometimes, just reaching through the crate with your fingers and gently stroking the puppy will be enough. If the whining continues immediately, then repeat the process and wait until the puppy is more soundly asleep before placing her back into the crate.
Repeat this process until you succeed or each subsequent training session will take longer and longer. I had to do this several times the first night and then once a night for a few nights. After that I only needed to do it for a few minutes before bedtime and occasionally if the puppy woke up in the middle of the night. Each night she felt more secure, she slept longer and longer until she would sleep the entire night through.
However I found that I had to repeat the training when I crated her during the day for naptime. But the process is exactly the same.
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