Emma's Puppy Training Tips

When Emma was a puppy, her humans had to know about two different things when it came to her bathroom habits. First was equipment, and second was what to expect from a little puppy (later a big puppy).

Emma’s Equipment
Emma’s mom knew that it was important that a puppy got to be part of the family. Emma was going to want to see her people, hear, touch and smell them too. After all, she was going to be an important part of the family her whole life!

So that’s why Emma grew up in the kitchen. Her mom knew that Emma wouldn’t have liked living like some puppies, closed in a bathroom or a laundry room. In the kitchen everybody came to see her and play with her, and pick her up.

Emma was happy with her wire crate (Petsmart). It was smaller than the big dog crate that she uses now; just the right size for a puppy. And because it was wire, Emma could see out, hear everything, and smell whatever was cooking on the stove! And during the day when her mom was at work, Emma had a safe place to stay so trouble couldn’t find her, and so she couldn’t find trouble! Um, that is, Emma didn’t find trouble as much!

The thing is, Emma wasn’t confined just to her crate. Clipped (clips at Petsmart) on to her puppy-sized crate was a nice exercise pen (Petsmart), and it was wire too. So she had a little crate, and a little pen all together. This was just right for a little puppy, because she could go inside her crate and sleep on her bed, but step into her pen and go to the bathroom.

When she was little, Emma’s mom had four old bath towels that she set aside just for the puppy. And that’s what Emma slept on. Because sometimes Emma would have accidents when she forgot to go into the pen to the bathroom, and a nice dry towel was always ready to replace the soiled one that went right into the washer.

When puppies are paper trained, they know to potty on the paper. And that’s a good place to go, because it’s easy for their people to pick it up and put it in a garbage bag. But papers cant soak up as much moisture as a puppy can produce. So the best thing to do is line the whole pen with puppy pads, then cover them with the familiar newspapers. After a while they get used to going on the puppy pads alone; here’s how. At first cover the whole pen floor with puppy pads, and newspapers over them. After a few days you can take up one of the pads and it’s newspaper, leaving the rest. Just remember to leave a small piece of wet newspaper on top of one of the pads where you want the puppy to pee, but no newspaper….there will be newspapers on the rest of the pads. Keep removing a pad every few days, and leaving a small piece of wet newspaper on the pad where puppy is supposed to pee. After two or three weeks, there will be just the one pad and the puppy will be using it alone.

A long time ago, Emma’s Uncle Sydney was a puppy and he lived in the kitchen, but there was a wood floor. So his mom bought a remnant piece of vinyl floor covering from Home Depot and put it under the crate and pen. That way if Sydney ever missed the puppy pad, it wouldn’t soak into the wood, but could be cleaned off with a paper towel and disinfectant.

What to Expect from the Puppy
Emma wants everyone to know that a puppy is really a little baby dog. Just like human babies, little puppies have to pee frequently. A rule of thumb is that a puppy can hold it between peeing about one hour for every month old they are. So if mom is away nine hours at work, a new puppy has to pee nine times. That’s a lot of wet. And the puppy won’t be able to hold off all day for mom to come back from work until it is approximately nine months old. But that’s not so bad when compared to human babies! Emma was always proud that she learned how to hold it longer than human babies her same age.

Another thing that Emma’s mom was very careful about was to never scold Emma for having an accident (even if she was loose with the family on the carpet). That’s because puppies don’t understand scolding and it confuses them about their housebreaking. Instead, if Emma started to have an accident, her mom would always scoop her up and take her to the back yard on the grass. When Emma would pee, she was praised and told what a good girl she was. That way Emma learned that going on the grass is good. But she never was told that going on the carpet was bad. To Emma, after a while, it just seemed like a good idea to go on the grass, because she got praised.

The ultimate goal for a puppy is for them to learn to always go on the grass in the back yard. It takes a good long time, probably a year before a puppy stops having accidents. And even then there may be one once in a while. Because they’re really just little ones until they are two, even though they have full-sized bodies by age one.

So Emma got to stay in the kitchen for almost a year. And now she’s a big girl and gets to go to dog shows. She went to Tampa, and Long Beach, and even New York City. And her mom knows that Emma won’t have accidents unless she’s feeling bad, or gets really scared.