Toilet Training a Puppy – No One Can Do It For You!

Toilet Training a Puppy – It Takes Daily Management and Training!

One of the most common misunderstandings I need to deal with clients on a weekly basis is toilet training. It is very common for people to contact us thinking that we can toilet train their new puppy for them in a matter of hours within one home visit. In fact, this is one of the most frustrating misunderstandings for dog trainers and I personally do not understand at all where this kind of expectation comes from. It is completely illogical and unreasonable. We already know that toilet training a child with far better ability to understand the process takes years, so how people expect dogs to somehow learn this in one training session doesn’t make any sense to me. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcuts but daily management and training for toilet training a puppy or an older dog whose training hasn’t been successful! 

Toilet Training Can Not Be Outsourced to Someone Else!

‘But I don’t have time for it myself, I work full time’, ‘The cleaning of the accidents is simply putting an unreasonable strain on the whole family’, ‘But my puppy goes all the time, I can’t manage it all the time’… These are just a few exapmles of the comments from clients who thought toilet training could be outsourced to someone else. Unfortunately, it is irrelevant what we want or think should happen when training animals, it comes down to their ability to learn and understand things and training must always consider this. Toilet training the way we want is not something dogs understand naturally. It takes daily management for preventing accidents in the wrong places, reinforcing the right behaviour and creating a habit that follows our training. This is a process that will takes weeks, not hours or days! If you don’t have interest or time for toilet training, don’t get a puppy, it’s that simple. We can not choose what we like about owning a dog and only accept those things, it’s a package deal with both good and bad and toilet training is one of the things we simply need to do, there’s no way around it.  

If You Don’t Train and Manage Toilet Training Dogs Don’t Learn

This is very logical however I have met a lot of people who have done nothing about toilet training their dogs while expecting them to learn on their own. This will not happen. Dogs are perfectly happy to pee and poo inside on your floors and furniture unless you teach them another way!