We’ve trained four. No matches, and the command used is “Do your business.” You start by saying it when they are little, and before long they associate the command with going. On club outings there are 10 dogs all going at the same time before we boarded the ferry.
Our retired breeder goes in our backyard, but on walks goes in a park consistently within a five to ten foot radius. I don’t think getting her to go inside would be a problem. What would be a problem is the amount of urine that big dogs produce. We kept an intact male Golden from Australia, and he went amazing amounts on walks. I trained him to go only where I wanted him too, but he (like our old pet male dog) enjoyed marking all over. So limiting him to inside would have been a problem.
I guess it comes from just my experience with crate training, where it’s part of housebreaking, the two work hand-in-hand. I’ve never seen crate trained dogs that weren’t also housebroken and the crate was integral in the training - straight from the crate to outside to eliminate. I can see if the immediately outside part isn’t done consistently after exiting the crate, which is when the dog usually needs to go the most, then the house training fails because they just go in the house after they leave the crate. Didn’t mean to contradict the book if that’s what I did, I didn’t read it, but recommend anyone with an un-housebroken dog to do so!
It’s entirely possible I missed another meaning in an above post…
I’ve had dogs all my life, and my wife has too. We’ve never had a dog that wasn’t housebroken.
I used to train obedience and protection dogs. I know a wee bit about dogs.
These 2 knuckleheads just have to mark everything they can, regardless of our training.:mad:
Never let your dog get to the point where it really has to go to the bathroom and it’s out of the crate and you’re not around.
The biggest problem is that once a dog pees or poops in the house, the smell wll make it want to go in the same place again. So if the puppy has an accident in the house, make sure you clean it thoroughly, and then use odor remover to make sure every trace of scent is gone. If you paper train a puppy, you’ll have a hell of a time preventing the adult dog from occasionally going in the house.
Our routine with a puppy:
Feed puppy.
Take puppy outside, tell it to “hurry up”.
2a. If puppy does its thing, throw a big damned party.
2b. If puppy doesn’t go within two minutes, puppy goes in the crate.
Take puppy out after a suitable interval. Puppy goes straight outside. Hurry up. If puppy goes, puppy gets to stay out of the crate until we think there’s a chance puppy might have to go again soon. Then repeat 2-3.
This works every time. It doesn’t take all that long, either. And the puppy learns that indoors is never, ever the right place to go to the bathroom.
For added bonus points, hang a little bell on the back door, and ring it every time you go out. Get puppy to eventually learn to ring the little bell. Now you have a dog that never goes in the house, and if it needs to go to the bathroom it will go to the back door and ring the bell, letting you know. And if you take the dog on trips, having a dog that can go on command is a godsend. We travel everywhere with our border collie, and all we have to do is stop at a suitable place and say, “hurry up!”, and she jumps out of the car, does her business, and jumps back in again.
It’s so odd that cats are generally considered less trainable, they have better potty habits. Although, some posts have insinuated it’s more due to size than species.
So, we know that cats are potty-trainable (with substantial owner effort)… Are dogs? How about dogs of not-cat sizes?
You really don’t have to train a cat to use a litter box. Once or twice as a kitten and they do it like it’s their job. It’s more an instinct for them to bury their waste.
Right. With cats it’s mostly instinct. Dogs are VERY trainable, but many people don’t learn how to do it or put in the time or effort required. Most dogs would LOVE for you to show them what to do.
They’re both male, brothers.
They’re never with any other dogs unless they’re on a leash, so I’ve told myself that my social responsibility to spay/neuter is tempered with the fact that they never have a chance to interact with wimmins.
Our cat on the other hand…
We were adopted by a kitten years ago. Mrs. D., who is deathly allergic to cats, lets the damn thing stay in the basement, then the den, then the house. Eventually, she’s a come-and-go cat that starts acting crazy one night. Emergency vet explains estrus to me like I’m a 9yo Albanian who’s never heard of procreation.:rolleyes:
Doing the socially responsible thing, I have this stray cat fixed to the tune of about $500 when all is said and done.
Perhaps that’s clouding my desire to fix **2 **critters at once!
Now, can they train a dog to put its poop in a paper bag, put on a porch, light it, ring the bell, and run?