The Complete Guide to Potty Training Your Puppy!

Inertia was the most successful potty training experience I've ever had in my entire life, and today I'm going to show you exactly what we did so that you can have the same success with your dog too. I'm Zach George. I train dogs. This is my new dog, and I'm going to show you how I trained her from day one. Things definitely won't always go smoothly. You can start from the beginning, or you can pick up anywhere. Subscribe and hit the bell notification so you never miss an episode. When you put into motion an approach based on love and respect, your results will forever remain in motion. This is Inertia. Welcome to the dog training experience. If there's one thing that everyone wants from their dog, it's for their dog to be potty trained. Right off the bat, to potty train your dog, you have to have great treats. Seriously, use the best treats that you can get. I use Pupford treats all the time. They're good because they taste great. These are the freeze-dried chicken ones, and Inertia loves these. There's 475 treats in here. Do you know how many things you could train with 475 treats? When you give your dog a high-quality treat like this when they've had a successful potty outing, you're helping them understand that doing their business where you want them to means they also get something fantastic. Pupford has an enormous selection of really high-end treats. That's important because lots of dogs like different things. I'm going to have a link in the description where you can get all of Pupford's awesome training treats. You think she's trying to tell me something? Inertia is just over a year old now, and we've filmed all of her training. Hopefully, by now, most of you have seen episode one where we literally picked Inertia up at eight weeks of age. For obvious reasons, potty training was a major priority of ours from day one. Whether you have a brand new puppy or dog, or you're working on training with a dog that you've had for years, my books are going to help you too. I'll have links in the description of this video. Remember, when you're potty training a dog, managing where they can and can't go is critical. Your goal is to prevent accidents wherever possible by keeping your dog under consistent supervision and by giving them more than enough opportunities to go potty in the correct places. I highly recommend actually attaching your dog to yourself with a leash, even indoors, because it is so easy to become distracted, even when you and your puppy are in the same room with each other. I mean, think about it. If you're always within six feet of your dog, it makes it a lot easier to spot those warning signs of an impending accident. Now, of course, nobody is perfect, but what do you do when you actually catch your dog in the process of having a potty accident? Do your best to interrupt them. With most puppies, I do this just by picking them up and taking them to the spot where I want them to do their business. Oh, boy, they're falling out. Oh, my gosh. Inertia, I cannot believe you did that. Now the whole internet has seen it. I mean, in the same way that you wouldn't punish a baby for having an accident, we're not going to punish our dogs ever for things like this. And that goes for if you catch your dog in the act or if you discover an accident that happened hours ago. Remember, dogs don't go in the house where they're not supposed to despite you or to get revenge or anything like that. And they also don't wait to intentionally come back inside to pee or poop because they're mad at you. So don't take it personally. Let your efforts be focused on preventing future accidents and focusing on what you like rather than punishing what you dislike. To prevent her from being able to have accidents in inappropriate places, Inertia had her own puppy bedroom downstairs in our house. And I was very consistent about supervising her and keeping her near me when she was outside of that area. And perhaps more importantly, I was really on top of letting her out super often. You may even want to set an alarm or a timer to really help keep you on top of letting your dog outside often. Puppies in particular sleep a lot. Whenever they wake up, take them to the place you want them to go potty right away. It's also a good idea to take them outside right after they've been playing for a minute or shortly after they eat and drink. And basically, if you're asking yourself if you should take your dog out, the answer is yes. It's much better to take your dog out too much than too little. When you give your dog potty breaks during potty training, be prepared to be outside for a while. Give them ample time to sniff and check everything out. And don't rush your dog during the potty training process. It's also really important to get your dog comfortable with their sleeping space where they'll be spending time when you can't directly supervise them. In Inertia's case, I used a combination of the crate and exercise pen for her personal bedroom. I encouraged her to go in and out voluntarily using lots of great treats so that she would learn to enjoy going in her crate. It really didn't take long either. I did this very frequently throughout the first week that I had her and really avoided manually placing her in the crate the vast majority of the time. If you get your dog really loving their crate or whatever setup you have for them, this should make the general potty training process much smoother because dogs tend to naturally avoid going potty in their sleeping area. If you do notice that they're having accidents overnight in their sleeping area, then you'll probably need to make it a little bit smaller. Just experiment with your own dog. For example, initially I tried a little bit of a larger area overnight and put pads down. Now, the reason I did this was to give Inertia a larger area and encourage her to be more comfortable because it was so early on in her training and it was more important for her to be comfortable than to be perfectly potty trained. I started closing the door to the crate overnight because dogs are less likely to have accidents if their sleeping area is smaller. However, I would use this expanded area with the crate and the playpen for short periods of management throughout the day. I know some of you are wondering about potty pads and I've considered this from a lot of different angles now. I've actually evolved my opinion on the use of potty pads over the years. I think they can be a great supplement to your potty training because it's always nice to have an indoor alternative for your dog. I mean, this can be especially useful during long periods of bad weather or if you live in a high-rise building where it takes a while for your dog to get outside or while you're traveling. So, it's up to you whether or not you'd like to use them. By the end of Inertia's first week, things were going all right. She's had what? What do you think, Bree? Maybe like four or five accidents? Poop. Yeah, maybe like four or five. Maybe one a day and it's always because I'm being careless. Or I'm being careless. Right, but the good news is she's yet to have an accident in her crate. I've been letting her out very consistently once an hour or so, maybe a little bit less than that. Every time I let her out of the crate, we immediately go outside or to a potty pad in the house because remember, I want her going on the pads and I want her going outside because it gives me options in the future. As the weeks went on, potty training challenges began to increase a little bit, probably because I was starting to get a little too relaxed. Many people are under the impression that potty training can be done in like a week, but not really. Right at the three-week mark, I think it's easy to let your guard down on potty training, especially if you are having a lot of success. But I think it's more important than ever to really double down on your efforts and keep it top of mind. Make sure that you get your dog out on a regular schedule. Even when you think they probably don't have to go, it's a good idea to take them out more rather than less. But as I got to know Inertia better, I was able to make better gains on our potty training efforts. We've gone like three or four days without an accident at all. So I'm fully prepared for setbacks as is common with potty training, so I'm not going to get too excited yet. But to review, in short, the formula for potty training is relentlessly controlling their environment while taking them outside more than they need to go. Every time that I catch her having an accident, I just kick myself because it's like, ah, I should have let her out. But I just, you know, pick her up and take her outside. There's no scolding or anything like that because I don't want her to get this complex about going potty. Sometimes when I have her in the house still on leash, I'm much better about detecting when I think she's about to go. Now, again, I think that's probably too late. I should be letting her out before I even detect that she's sniffing around because she has to go. Like, what do you think this is? Do you think maybe she has to go right now? I don't know. That makes me nervous. I'm going to go outside. Let's see. Okay, come on. Do you have to go pee? Yes. Look at that. Good job. That's exactly what I mean. You've got to really get to know your dog's individual body language and the way that they foreshadow, hey, I'm about to go potty. So if you ever have a question as to whether or not you should take your dog outside, take them outside. And as the days went on, I slowly began to grant inertia more and more freedom. Dogs learn pretty quickly not to go in their direct sleeping area. So by keeping their sleeping area relatively small at first and then gradually increasing it, they'll be much more likely to succeed. You might notice here, I have enlarged her area. While we pretty much always have this up most of the time, we've moved to keeping the second door over here open full time so that she has permanent access to a larger area. She's got lots of toys in here, lots of different textures of things to chew on and play with. It was becoming very routine for her to spend a couple hours easy at a time in here and not have any accidents. The other night, I tried leaving it completely open overnight, no accidents. And then it's been like three nights in a row now, no accidents over here. So there's no reason we can't expand her living area. It can take some time for a dog to generalize your entire house as their home. So increase their access to the house slowly and methodically and don't hesitate to take a step back if they have a relapse in potty accidents. By this point, inertia was doing great on her general potty training, but she still had excitement urination. That's where some dogs just get so excited that they can't keep their pee inside of them. I mean, it happens to all of us, right? In inertia's case, anytime she would see our friends or our family, she would become overjoyed and pee. The way I dealt with this was by trying to get her to go potty just before I knew she was about to encounter someone exciting and by encouraging family to be very calm or even ignore her for the first several minutes. Of course, my dad, well, he was never great about taking direction from me. There's the pee. Look at that. Most dogs will outgrow this kind of excitement urination by the time they're 18 months or so. It's also really important to remember that nothing throws off potty training progress like going to a new place. And you might remember a few months ago, we took a trip to Corpus Christi, Texas and inertia had a potty accident, even though she had been flawless for several months leading up to that. It's just, oh, inertia, what are you doing? Okay. We'll need to clean that up. And that's her first accident in, I mean, months and see if she had been off leash. I might not have even noticed that body accident. Really. It's vital to have them on leash and under control when introducing them to new places, particularly when they're young or untrained. So with all of that said, how do you actually know when potty training is complete? When your dog goes a good couple of months with virtually no potty accidents and they can make it several hours between breaks, you're pretty much there. But remember with house training like this, regressions are still fairly common and always, always be prepared to take a step back and modify their environment to make things easier for them. I mean, the occasional accident during your dog's first couple of years of life is normal, but make sure to analyze each instance. Ask yourself, for example, did your dog have a change in their environment or has it been too long between breaks and plan accordingly for the future so that you can prevent it from happening again. If you notice that your dog is having increased accidents, seemingly out of nowhere, it could be a medical issue. So check with your vet to make sure your dog is healthy. Good luck on your potty training and be sure to get Pupford training treats at the link in the description below. Subscribe to this channel and definitely check out both of my books. If you've got a new dog or if you're working on training a dog you've had for years, follow us on Instagram and TikTok for even more training advice. I'll have all of the links below and we'll see you in the next video.