How to Potty Train your Puppy EASILY! Everything you need to know!

If you want to know the most efficient way to house train your new puppy or dog, today's episode is for you. House training is a little bit more involved than most people imagine, but today I'm going to show you the steps you need to take in order to make the process as smooth as possible. Click thumbs up if you love puppy training videos, and if you're new to my channel, click subscribe right now. It's always free. Now, one of the easiest things you can do to set up your new pup for house training success is to feed them on a consistent schedule. You should also be feeding your puppy a high quality food as well. I recommend that you get your food from petflow.com slash Zach George. Why? Because you never need to leave the house to get your puppy's food, and it arrives at any time interval you'd like. Just pick your puppy's food and how often you want it delivered to your house. We want to revolutionize the way people teach dogs. Help us do that by changing the way you buy dog food. Look, you're going to get your puppy's food anyway. Get it this way and make your life a lot easier. I'll have a special link and a coupon code in the description that'll give you a fantastic discount on your first order. It's our responsibility as people to show our dogs where they can and can't go, and house training is a months-long process, but it's a good opportunity for you to become consistent, and that is a telltale sign of a good teacher. See, dogs aren't born knowing where they should and shouldn't relieve themselves. House training success is fastest achieved when you get really good at controlling your dog's environment and supervising them really well. Our overall goal is to teach our dogs that our house is their house. See, instinctively, dogs don't like to do their business where they live and sleep, but it can take a while for them to generalize an entire house as their primary residence. Let me show you what I mean. If this is your house, you first want your dog to understand that this area is their living space before expecting them to generalize the whole living room, the kitchen, bathroom, and so on until they've learned that the whole house is their house. You do this by slowly giving your dog access to the rest of the house under heavy supervision over time, along with taking them outside very often. So what are the best ways to control your dog's environment? I've found that the best way is by actually attaching a leash to you. This way, your dog can't wander off into another room, and you're in a better position to kind of take cues from your dog that they might want to go outside. Now, if you need help introducing a leash and a harness to your dog, I'll have a link in the description. Baby gates are a great way to control where your dog can and can't go. You could also get a puppy playpen like this one, and this will give your dog a fair amount of room when you want to break from heavy supervision from time to time. No matter how you decide to control your dog's environment, make sure you go out of your way to ensure that they're having a great time in whatever environment you choose. A crate is a nice way to give your dog a cozy place to hang out when you can't really supervise them. Now, since a crate is pretty small relative to a big room, your dog is less likely to do their business inside of the crate, and they'll be more likely to accept it as their primary living space. Remember, dogs don't like to do their business where they live and sleep. Understand, though, the crate is not a dog sitter. It's just a way to keep your dog safe and out of trouble for short periods of time when you absolutely can't supervise them. But you want to introduce the crate delicately in order to make sure that your dog enjoys being inside. First, we're going to let BB-8 just kind of explore the crate. I'm going to open it up, let him smell it, let him check it out, not forcing him in the crate at all. That's really good. I like how he reacted there. I'm just going to give him a treat, again, just to create a positive association while being in the presence of this crate. And I'm going to try and get him to go inside of the crate voluntarily because I don't want to force him in the crate. I want him to want to go in the crate. Good. Now you're learning. I'm going to set one right there. Awesome. I mean, that is terrific. That's really good. I'm going to try and put the treat in a little bit farther now. Go on. Go get it. Oh, look at that. Did you see that? He went in all by himself. Again, keeping this door open, letting him know he can come and go at least at this point in his training. You can even treat him from outside of the crate right here. And really, I'm just trying to achieve getting him comfortable with being in here for a little bit longer. I'm using tiny pieces of real chicken. Now I'm going to close the door like this and I'm going to lock it, but I'm not going to just walk away and leave him alone and give him another treat. It's a good idea to just kind of hang out with your dog like this for a little while, especially those first few training sessions. You might notice that I have a divider panel in this particular crate. That's because I don't want it to be too big for him right off the bat. The crate should be big enough for your dog to very comfortably move around in, but not necessarily take several steps in a row in. This is a very temporary step. After your dog has started to make the connection that this is where they hang out a lot, you can then begin to enlarge the crate. To be clear, an oversized crate is absolutely fine after your dog has gone several days without having an accident in the crate. In the beginning, place the crate near your bed so that your dog is less likely to have anxiety when you go to bed at night. It's normal that your puppy might keep you awake sometimes in the middle of the night, and yeah, you'll have to get in the habit of getting up and taking them outside. Hey, that's just part of having a puppy. It'll get better though. And later you can move the crate into another room if you want to. Now a good rule of thumb for how long your dog should be in the crate is roughly one hour per month of age. However, you really want to avoid having any dog stay in a crate for more than four or five hours at a time at any age, with the exception of overnight. See, this is why it's important to have additional puppy-proofed areas available, like a puppy-proofed laundry room or bathroom, where you can tolerate potty accidents if they do occur in case you do need to leave your dog alone for a little while. Before leaving your dog alone for many hours at a time, do your best to give them age-appropriate exercise. Now, since many of us have jobs that require us to be away from the house for more than eight hours at a time, make arrangements to come home at lunch and let them out and play for about 30 or 45 minutes if possible. If this is impractical for you though, you might need to enlist the help of a friend, family member, dog walker, or doggy daycare. Oh, you're good. So how often should you let your dog outside to go on a potty break? Well, in general, I recommend about once an hour. Make sure you take them outside immediately upon arriving home or waking up. Be prepared to stay outside for five to 10 minutes. It's okay if they don't go each time, but it's important that you continually give them the opportunity to go. Now, in cases where they've been left alone for two or more hours, make sure you take them outside immediately upon arriving home or waking up. While you're waiting for your dog to relieve himself, be boring. Just let him check out the environment because you don't want to distract him. Now, when he finishes going, that's when you reward him big. Yes, good boy. Good boy. You did terrific. Wow. You went poop outside. It's as though going potty outside unlocks the most fun version of you to your dog. Now, you can reward him with a great treat or even a short play session. Creating positive associations in this way will make your dog actually want to go outside to do their business. Now, if your dog does have an accident inside, don't punish him. This is about as effective as punishing an infant for going in their diaper. Your dog isn't to blame for this accident. Either you weren't consistent enough or you didn't control the environment well enough. Just do a better job next time. So what do you do if you actually catch your dog in the act of going inside? Well, if possible, pick them up and rush them outside. Otherwise, clean up the mess, doing your best to eliminate any odors, and do a better job of following the steps I've outlined in this video so far. Now, some of you might be wondering about submissive or excitement urination. That's where your dog pees when they get a little nervous or extra excited. Now, typically, most dogs will outgrow this by the time they're 12 to 18 months of age. But if you prioritize socializing your dog, they'll probably get there sooner rather than later. In general, I'd recommend against using puppy pads unless you have a unique situation, like maybe you live in a high-rise apartment where it's impractical to get your dog outside very often. That's because dogs generally develop a preference to whatever texture they experience most often while relieving themselves. So if you want your dog to go on grass full time, well, just introduce them to lots of grass and give lots of praise when they do their business in the right place. Most people celebrate house training success a little bit too prematurely. So how will you know when your dog is completely house trained? Well, I'd say that once they go one to two months with absolutely no accidents and can go several hours between potty breaks, you're probably out of the woods. Regression is likely, especially in the first year, or if you move or your dog experiences another major change to their environment. If this happens, just take a step back and go back to basics. Whether you have a puppy or an adult dog, remain vigilant for six straight months without letting your guard down. Dogs are relinquished all of the time because of issues with house training and other problem behaviors. Support content like this by contributing any amount you'd like to our Patreon campaign. This money goes directly to producing these videos. So go check it out and consider supporting the cause. Don't forget to set up automatic pet food delivery with petflow.com. I'll have a link and an awesome coupon code in the description that'll give you a terrific deal on your first auto ship order. And if you think BB-8 is out of this world, click thumbs up and make sure you're subscribed to the dog training revolution. See you guys next time. If you thought BB-8 was BB-great, then you'll want to check out how to leash train your puppy. I've got lots more videos with BB-8 coming too. Are you unsure on how to achieve better communication with your dog? Then check out the art of communicating with your dog. Now if you have a hyperactive dog or a dog that begs, I'll give you a great lesson on both of these topics in Stop Begging and Settle Down with Jacob the Rescue Dog. Thanks for your support on Patreon too and hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. We'll see you guys in the next video.