April 21, 2011
My 8 month old Pug just can't seem to figure out the potty training. She is very skittish and if anything scares her she will not potty outside. Do you have any advice?
Full Question:
We have an 8 month old female pug (Dande) and a 7 year old female pug (Daisy). We are having difficulty house breaking her. Our vet indicated she was closer to 7 or 8 weeks of age (instead of 10 weeks as told when we purchased her) and this may be our problem. Dande is crated during the day when we are at work and other times when she will not potty outside. Our biggest problem seems to be getting her to let us know when she needs to go out. She is very skittish about everything - empty bags, anything new we bring into the house, leaves blowing across the yard, etc. We can't seem to get her on a regular schedule with her potty habits. She is taken out twice in the morning before we leave for work (the same time every day). Between potty walks, she is fed. Some mornings she will potty after being fed, some mornings she will immediately poop in her crate when she is done eating and some mornings she won't go at all. Like I mentioned, she is very skittish. We scold her verbally when she potties in the floor and in her crate and she cowers down and uncurls her tail. We have tried blocking off part of the crate and she doesn?t seem to mind being in a small area with her own waste.Any suggestions you can offer on how to deal with her would be greatly appreciated.
Ed's Answer:
Read the article and the Q&A I wrote on house training. You can find these if you go to the list of training articles and scroll down. http://leerburg.com/articles.htm
I would recommend you purchase the DVD I produced titled Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months
I have owned and trained German Shepherds for 40 years. In the past 30 years I have bred over 340 litters of working bloodline German Shepherds. I give this video to all of my puppy customers and never get questions on how to raise a pup.
Read the description of the tape on my web site. Dog training is not rocket science its simple common sense ideas on how to handle and train a dog, The DVD has 2 ½ hours of training information along with 15 puppy training articles that I have written.
You should also consider my 4 hour DVD on Basic Dog Obedience - The fact is you have way more to learn than your dog. I always recommend the handlers start studying this DVD right away even though you wont train a lot of the work until the pup is 4 to 6 months old.
When we raise a puppy to be a house dog I follow the work in my article GROUND WORK TO BECOMING A PACK LEADER. The pup is never loose in the house without having a leash on it which it in our hand, tied to our belt or its in a crate. We don’t expect pups to tell us when they have to go outside. We take them out a lot – if they pee on the floor – well we screwed up because we did not take them out enough.
I also recommend that you go to my web site and read the article I wrote on my philosophy of dog training. I think you will get some good ideas there.
I would recommend you purchase the DVD I produced titled Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months
I have owned and trained German Shepherds for 40 years. In the past 30 years I have bred over 340 litters of working bloodline German Shepherds. I give this video to all of my puppy customers and never get questions on how to raise a pup.
Read the description of the tape on my web site. Dog training is not rocket science its simple common sense ideas on how to handle and train a dog, The DVD has 2 ½ hours of training information along with 15 puppy training articles that I have written.
You should also consider my 4 hour DVD on Basic Dog Obedience - The fact is you have way more to learn than your dog. I always recommend the handlers start studying this DVD right away even though you wont train a lot of the work until the pup is 4 to 6 months old.
When we raise a puppy to be a house dog I follow the work in my article GROUND WORK TO BECOMING A PACK LEADER. The pup is never loose in the house without having a leash on it which it in our hand, tied to our belt or its in a crate. We don’t expect pups to tell us when they have to go outside. We take them out a lot – if they pee on the floor – well we screwed up because we did not take them out enough.
I also recommend that you go to my web site and read the article I wrote on my philosophy of dog training. I think you will get some good ideas there.
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