dog behavior and dog house training

Dog Owner connection is not just about training a dog or overcoming bad dog behaviour, it is more about making a stronger connection with your dog.

When you get a puppy, toilet training and crate training is almost always your priority.

There are a bunch of guidelines that experts use to get your dog to understand to pee and poo in one place (in a litter tray in an apartment) or in a part of the yard if you own a house with room around it.

The dog toilet training steps

The positive reinforcement method is fairly universal. It involves

1              Give your dog many opportunities to go outside.

2              watch for when they look like they want to go to the toilet and take them outside before they do so.

3              Take the dog to the same spot in the yard or litter tray each time

4              Reward the dog every time they go to the toilet in the place where you want them to go.

Its all about making the experience pleasurable and consistency.

Reward can be a dog treat, a pat, a tone of voice or a toy.

When toilet training doesn’t work

It is easy to get annoyed and want to take it out on the dog for fouling an area up, but like a small child, they don’t yet understand what you want them to do.

As a dog grows up, the invariably learn that they don’t want to poo in their own yard. They might be fine with peeing and claiming territory in a house or yard, but a balanced dog will do all it can to hold its poo until it is out of its territory. They usually don’t want other animals tracking the smell and eating them (harks back to the wolf days).

This means that if your dog has a preference to poo in your yard, there is a fair chance that you are not doing anywhere near enough walks with it.

Sometimes dogs who have been toilet training will revert to secret poos in the house, but this is often to do with an anxiety. Again they might not be socialised enough to know that being with other dogs is a fun and natural thing to do.

Sometimes dogs will mark pee territory in your house to claim a room when they are feeling insecure. Are you giving the dog enough affection and reinsurance. Are you socialising it enough off lead so that it has confidence of its own?

What can dog poo and pee tell you about your dogs health?

Like humans dogs have pretty simple equations when it come to eating and drinking. Food in must end up in food out. If you feed a dog good food and dog treats and they get plenty of exercise then their stools should be solid with good texture. Knowing the health of your dog will often involved knowing how good their bowel movements are and that their pee is clear in colour (so kidneys are working well).

A good dog owner connection is making sure that your dogs toilet habits are natural and mostly out of the house and yard, because you walk your dog daily in the mornings and ideally evenings too.