A puppy cannot go for a walk on a regular basis before receiving its first vaccinations, so one of the main concerns of the guardians when the puppy comes home is to teach him to relieve himself in a specific place designated for it and, in this way, avoid having to clean stools and urine continuously. For this purpose, we can use newspaper or artificial grass, although the most common is to buy puppy underpads, which absorb urine and neutralize odours.
Training the puppy to use the underpad is a simple task, but it requires patience on our part, since the puppy can take a while to learn it and this is completely normal considering its young age her. In this article on our site we give you some keys to learn how to teach your puppy to relieve himself in the underpad
Identify the areas of the house where the puppy usually urinates
Once the puppy begins to adapt and get to know its new home, we will realize that it always tends to relieve itself in some areas more or less concrete of the house. This is no coincidence, puppies choose the places where they feel most comfortable to defecate or urinate, generally areas far from where they eat and where they sleep, and turn them into their particular "bathroom".
The first thing we need to do is identify these places and place pads in all of them. Then, over time, we can reduce the number of underpads and leave only one while we teach the dog to relieve himself in the street, but at first it is better to have several, as this will speed up learning.
What to do if the puppy breaks the pads?
Although it is not usually the most common, it is possible that the dog breaks the underpads as a game. In these cases, it is important to offer him positive alternatives, such as toys appropriate to his age, just at the moment when he begins to break them, in this way he will gradually understand little, that it is that toy that can bite. Discover in this other post the best toys for puppies.
Establish routines and observe his language
Maintaining more or less stable daily routines will help your puppy to adapt more easily to the home, since routines provide predictability to the environment. Setting meal, play or rest times can help you figure out when the puppy is most likely to relieve himself and anticipate this time, leading him to the area where the pads are placed.
Some signs that can also help you predict when your puppy will feel the need to urinate or defecate are the following:
- You just woke up from a long nap.
- It's been about 20 minutes since your last meal.
- You just had an intense gaming session.
- He is restless and walks fast around the house.
- he begins to circle around himself sniffing the ground
At these times or when you observe any of these behaviors, it's time to redirect the pup to the pads areaand keep him close until he finally relieves himself. It doesn't matter if he makes a mistake at first and does them right outside the underpad, the important thing is to teach him where to go when he wants to urinate or defecate. Little by little we will refine the exercise and teach you not to get out of the soaker.
Use positive reinforcement and avoid punishment
Once the puppy begins to associate the underpads with the "bathroom" area, we must ensure that he always goes to that place to relieve himself and that he does it inside the underpad and not only near him. This training will require more or less time depending on our attitude and the puppy's age and attention span, as we know that if the puppy is still very small it will take a little longer for him to understand what we ask of him.
Every time the puppy approaches the underpad and relieves himself there, we will first wait until he is completely done with it, and then give him lots of social reinforcement (compliments, caresses, play, etc.) and, if we want, we can also give him a piece of food every time he performs the correct behavior. We must reinforce him even if he is not quite right and some pee or poop comes out of the underpad, because the puppy has also correctly gone to the area designated for it. With patience, we can begin to reinforce with greater intensity only those occasions in which the puppy does its things inside the underpad without getting out, so that this behavior increases in frequency. A good idea is to place two or three pads close together to make the area larger and easier for the puppy to hit.
We should never punish, hit or yell a puppy for relieving himself outside the underpad, much less grab him and get close to his face urine or feces telling him that this is not done. Unfortunately, this is something that many people do, even sometimes on the recommendation of third parties who, theoretically, know about canine education. The truth is that a puppy is not going to learn anything good through this type of punishment and intimidation and the only thing we will achieve is that the dog gets scared, gets scared of us, takes longer to learn or even starts to perform unwanted behaviors such as eat their own feces to avoid punishment. We talk about this last point in this other article: "Why do dogs eat poop?".
Eliminate odors in the rest of the house
When the dog pees or poops in an area of the house leaves an olfactory signal that invites him to returnto that same place the next time he feels like relieving himself. To avoid this, we must clean the house very well before placing the underpads and every time the puppy does his things where he shouldn't, using enzymatic products or products that contain active oxygenOther frequently used cleaning products such as bleach or ammonia are not able to completely eliminate these odors and, although we cannot perceive them, dogs do.
Sometimes, the puppy may prefer to urinate on those objects that smell the most like us, such as the sofa, the bed or some of our clothes. This, again, is a response to an olfactory stimulus and we should not punish our puppy for it, as it is a natural behavior and we should educate him to modify it and offer him alternatives instead of scolding him and causing him confusion. In this case, it is advisable to block access to certain areas of the house where he usually urinates at those times when we cannot watch him, clean well and continue reinforcing that he relieves himself in the underpad, as this will be the correct alternative.
Remove pads little by little
When we have taught the puppy to relieve himself in the underpads and always go to them, we can begin to remove some. This is usually done at the moment the puppy begins to go outside to, in this way, start a transition training between peeing and pooping in the soaker and start doing it in the street.
For a while, the puppy will relieve himself on the street, but will continue to use the underpad we left at home. When the tendency to do their things during the walk is greater than to do them at home, we will completely remove all the underpads and we will only reinforce the behavior of urinating and defecating in the street
We must bear in mind that the fact that the puppy begins to walk does not mean that he will automatically stop doing his things at home, because even if he has learned to do it on the street, occasionally something can still escape at home and this will be the case until approximately seven or eight months of age, when he already has complete control over his sphincters and is able to endure several hours without going to the bathroom.
Finally, note that even if a puppy does not yet have all its vaccinations and, therefore, cannot go out for a walk regularly, it is very important to take it outside in your arms or inside a backpack or transporter This is so because it is essential that during the socialization stage the puppy gets used to the noises and stimuli that he will find once he begins to go outside. If you don't, he can develop phobias and significant behavior problems.
We encourage you to watch this video to learn how to train your puppy to relieve himself on the street:
