Woody’s Way
The Best Way of House Training Your Pup
Another problem for a lot of people is the house training process. Like most correct procedures concerning puppies, it is much easier to prevent a problem than to correct it. Let’s go over the routines and reasons that help expedite the house training process.
1) The puppy does not want to be in its own filth. There’s a reason that the common name given to the privies of rural Americans before the advent of septic systems was “Outhouse”. They wanted the repository of their human waste to be as far away from their living quarters as possible. A puppy is no different. That’s what makes crate training so effective. If you have properly aired your pup when you put it in its crate, it will try to hold it as long as possible. A pup left unattended can go over in the corner and make a deposit and walk away, denying all responsibility. If the pup is allowed to do this, it doesn’t have to deal with the consequences. We want the pup to be self motivated to keep its crate clean. Another big advantage of crate training is that after being crated for an hour or so, the pup will urinate like a racehorse when it is taken out to air. You want to encourage the pup to fully empty its bladder instead of piddling just a few drops every twenty minutes. Crate training is a very good way to help a pup develop bladder control.
2) Pay attention to the pup’s routine. Puppies need consistency. If we feed, water, and take the puppy outside at the same times every day, we will be more successful. The times you always want to give a puppy a chance to relieve itself is any time it wakes from a nap, or after being fed or watered.
3) It’s OK to take help from a Russian scientist. I used to think that any grade school kid had studied about Ivan Pavlov. Boy was I wrong. Obviously the antiquated public education system from which I emerged was infinitely more advanced and efficient than what we have today. OK,OK, I’ll get off the soap box and continue. Pavlov was the scientist who used dogs as a model to understand classical conditioning. What we want to do as puppy trainers is to use classical conditioning to teach our pup to relieve itself on command.
We can teach a pup to relieve itself on command? So how do we do this? Here we go. First we want to choose an area of our yards that we want our pup to see as its bathroom. Choose a place in an area of your yard that is away from entrances or pathways. We are going to use an old dog trainer’s trick to cause the puppy to empty its lower colon. How do we accomplish this? We are going to give the puppy a suppository of the simplest kind, a paper match. We will use a soft paper match as the suppository. We do this by 1) Lubricating the business end of the paper match. You can use most commercial lubricants or just go with your own saliva like I do. 2) Next we insert it in the puppy’s rectum. Don’t reverse the steps, it will leave a terrible taste in your mouth.
After inserting the match, we carry the puppy to the aforementioned “bathroom area”. We put the puppy down and wait. If the puppy has a fully loaded colon, it won’t take very long until it squats and makes a deposit. If there’s very little in its lower colon it may take several minutes, but sooner or later the pup gets tired of the match being where it is and squats to remove it. We don’t play with the pup or do anything to distract it. As soon as the pup starts to sniff and look around for the right place to go, we begin to say a code word. The word I always use is “hurry”. Which word you use is not important, only that you use it consistently. When you’re out airing your dog on a cold and windy night, it will probably make sense to you why I chose the word “hurry”. After the pup has finished you praise it and maybe play with it a bit if you have time.
The magic of all this is that after about a week of consistently using the match and “hurry”, just like Pavlov, we can skip the match suppository and just say “hurry”. The pup will start looking for a place to go. You also want to use your code word any time you see your pup about to relieve itself. You don’t say it firmly like you would a command. You say it as a medium, ambient sound. Once you have it, you have it forever.
Next time we’ll talk about beginning the serious obedience program.
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Become a happy owner or learn about our Labrador Retriever training services: Call Woody and Judi at (910) 462-3246 for more information.
About Woody Thurman: Woody and Judi Thurman of Twin Lakes Kennel have been breeding and training world class Labrador Retrievers for more than 35 years. Twin Lakes Kennel is the number #1 resource for Labrador Retriever puppies. We select from the most dominant American field bloodlines and breed for natural hunting instinct and tractability. Our Labs, both puppies and adults, are out of the top working Labrador Retriever bloodlines in the country. The end results are the most talented, well rounded Labrador Retrievers possible, making them a most desirable family pet.
More than eight thousand (8,000) Labrador Retrievers have been bred and trained during those thirty-five years. During this time, Woody has titled more than 200 AKC Master Hunter Labrador Retrievers. Woody has also qualified 47 retrievers at AKC Master Nationals. He has won the Ducks Unlimited Open Championships twice. In addition, two of his Labs, Drake and Rondy, bred and trained at Twin Lakes Kennel, are in the Master National Hall of Fame.
Our Labrador Retriever puppies are the culmination of a 30 year search for the most talented, well rounded Labrador Retriever possible. We select from the most dominant American field bloodlines and breed for natural hunting instinct and tractability. Our puppies begin a structured socialization program in the litter box and are introduced to birds at six weeks.
All our Labrador Retriever Puppies carry a guarantee against hereditary defects and to have basic retrieving instincts. Parents of all our Labrador Retriever puppies are physically sound with certified hips and eyes. They are out of the top working Labrador Retriever bloodlines in the country.
We guarantee all our Labrador Retriever puppies to be free from hereditary defects.
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