Toilet Training – Pick a Spot!

Teaching your dog to go to the toilet in one particular area is a good idea as it will make it easier for you to clean up after them and protects precious areas of garden.

Dogs quite often have a substrate preference (the type of ground),  they prefer one surface over another, so if you’re looking to teach them to go on a patio type area it might take them a little getting used to to begin with.

Try these steps to get you started.

1. When she’s toileting, start pairing the action of weeing with a verbal cue such as ‘Toilet’ or ‘Be quick’ – whatever makes sense to you 🙂
2. Try to say it just before she starts weeing, so when she’s sniffing around preparing to go.
3. Reward her with praise and or a treat
4. Repeat these steps for about a week or until you think she’s starting to show some understanding of the word.
5. You can also do this out on a walk, doesn’t just have to be in the garden.
6. Then pick a time when you know she’d need to go. Take her to where you’d like her to go to the toilet.
7. Ask her to ‘Toilet’ or whatever word you are using.
8. She might look to move back to where she would usually go – if you can prevent her to begin with that would be good.
9. If she’s really not keen on doing it on the paving to start with, perhaps using something that she’d be familiar with like newspaper on the paving, or even a piece of turf to begin with to get her used to the idea of doing it in that area.
10. When she goes to the toilet, be very enthusiastic and praise and reward her heavily 🙂
11. Don’t immediately start washing off the area as it is helpful to leave some scent there to remind her what you’d like her to do.
12. Because she’s used to weeing on grass you may always wish to prevent access to the grass area whilst you’re not able to supervise her as they do tend to revert to old habits given the opportunity.
13. Just like people, what we learn first we tend to learn best.

Does your dog have a cue for going to the toilet? Do you find it helpful – comment below! 🙂