How to potty train a puppy.

Let's tackle the big one: Potty training a puppy.

I feel like this is one of the most difficult things with training a puppy. It's difficult to take a puppy somewhere if your worried if he will go in someone's house. So what can you do?  Accidents are gross, messy, and avoidable. Some things to keep in mind.

The plastic thing in the background is a baby gate.

• Have a good cleaner. I like to use Nature's Miracle, puppies really cue off of smell and having an enzymatic cleaner helps stops that.  Having a good cleaner really helps stop repeat accidents it also helps your house not suffer to badly or leave lingering reminders of puppy mistakes.
• Take your puppy out often, if you are struggling I would suggest taking him our every hour. Now I was lucky and Simon slept through the night from day one, but some puppies have a hard time holding it for eight hours, so they might need a middle of the night break. 
• Confinement. We keep Simon either in his crate, in an enclosed area like an x-pen, or in one room with the careful use of baby gates.
• Go outside with him and reward heavily when he does go outside. Find what works with your dog. Simon figured out that going the bathroom outside got him a treat and is always super excited to go outside and go potty. He clearly does not yet get the don't go the bathroom in the house, but he loves to go the bathroom outside.

Simon say's "Mom I went potty where is my treat."

Another tip I would suggest is if you can't keep him contained having him on long leash. Simon is doing pretty well, but we don't trust him on his own so we are still keep a really close eye on him. He has really been progressing and I am so proud of him, but I also know he is just three months old and we have to keep it up because it could be a number of months before he is 100%.

Long leash on in the house.

Things to avoid:

• Rubbing their nose in it. This doesn't help, and all it does it freak your puppy out.
• Yelling at them after the fact. Dogs don't put together things they did in the past. So all you do is make them nervous around you.
• Screaming at them if they go the bathroom in front of you. You can accidentally teach a puppy to be scared to go the bathroom in front of you and can make the puppy more difficult to potty train.

Puppy how to's.

Lets face it puppies are a lot of work. Sure they are cute and playful and fun, but have one for a few days or sometimes a few hours and it really hits you. They are exhausting; they get into everything, they love to steal something and run away with it, and the moment of quiet? Yes he just went the bathroom somewhere you don't want him to.

So how do you handle the crazy baby that you decide to share you life, love, and home with? You work. You puppy proof to try and negate damage. You use crates for potty training and safe separation. You use an assortment of toys so that the puppy does not find/make his own. You invest in (or borrow) baby gates to keep your puppy and your stuff safe. And even with all all that work he  will still find a way to sneak away when you looked away and get into something.

 

Anyone who tells you puppies are just small adult dogs or that they are easy is clearly suppressing memories of all the work there puppy was or they have never had one.

That's not even getting into the vet appointments and how you have to be careful of parvo and them trying to eat all the things they shouldn't. 

Over the next few weeks I am going to go over some common puppy issues and how we have been addressing them with Simon.

Things like;

How to Potty train a puppy.

How to deal with chewing and destroying items.

How To stop puppy biting.

And dealing with the crazy puppy energy. 

Bath Pictures

I have had a rough week so I will just share some bath pictures of Simon while I get my life together.

Someone was not happy about his bath.

 

Wet puppy.

 

Photo project. 10 Weeks.

Simon is now 10 weeks old. 

  He is really starting to change get bigger and his face markings are changing its both fascinating  and sad to see him growing up so fast.

The picture on the left is the first picture I ever saw of him. The middle is a picture I took the first day I had him. The picture on the right is a picture I took today.  I have had him two weeks today and I find it hard to believe how much he has changed.

Simon and Sadie's Photo Project.

               I am going to take a picture of Sadie and Simon every week for at least the first year we will see how long after that. You would not believe how difficult it is to get an 8 week old puppy to sit still for a photo. I took the pictures for this week and last week but I didn't get a chance to post it so this week we will have week 8 and 9. 

 I am really looking forward to doing this project and seeing Simon grow with Sadie as a comparison. I might even do a slide show of all of them.

New Beginings.

We have some pretty huge news on 1/2/2014  we picked up our new little boy. Everyone meet Simon.

 He is a Siberian Husky born on 11/5/2013 in Washington state a little north of Spokane. Simon was one of a litter of seven, four boys and three girls. Out of the boys there were two grey boys, one black boy and Simon the red boy. We had decided on a boy and I was really drawn to the red but we wanted to wait till they were a little older and see who the breeder thought was the most people focused and friendly. I was so excited when the breeder said the red was the one she would recommend.

On Thursday, January 2nd we flew to Spokane where my friend that adopted Maya picked us up at the airport and then we drove to pick up Simon. He was super fluffy because they had given him a bath so he would be clean for his adventure home. I don't know if I told them, but I really appreciate that they did that. It was really nice to have a clean puppy to travel with. After that we picked up Maya and started the drive home.

With stops for the puppy to potty, and driving on mountain roads in the middle of the night, the drive took a little over 10 hours of driving to get home. It was Friday morning before we got home and the good news was that Simon was perfect in the car. He slept most of the way, would wake up and cuddle, and had no accidents the whole car ride. He was a little shaken. You could tell the new people new places and all the sights and sounds were a little overwhelming for him but he would just shake it off  sigh and snuggle in for an other nap. It was great till we got home a little after 8:00 am and Simon was well rested and not up for taking another nap.

 I  made some tea got out some toys and set about playing with our new family member. It was just the two of us. Sadie was staying with some friends during our trip and we didn't really want to handle the introductions while super tired and Nik had done a large chunk of the driving and had passed out. So we got out a stuffy and we set about doing the most important thing young critters do. Playing.

Ball.

For Christmas received a fantastic camera as a gift. As a result I have spent a lot of time harassing Sadie a taking a ton of pictures of her.

Enjoy the story of Sadie and a ball.

Sadie was enjoying her ball on the couch.

 

If I stay here she wont take my ball from me.

Ball!?

Why did you have to fall Ball?

All better.

This very silly post is brought to you because I really enjoyed taking pictures of Sadie with her ball. Enjoy.