How To Housebreak Your Dog...Even If It's Still A Puppy.Written by Jake Berlin
The one unpleasant aspect of owning any puppy is job of housebreaking. As cute as puppies are, each must be trained but remember that every puppy will conquer housebreaking although at a different rate. While some dog breeds can be housebroken in a very short amount of time, other breeds can be quite challenging. Paper Training Paper training or using commercially made training pads should be avoided. While this method of training has long been promoted as being easy and successful, truth is that it teaches puppy that going potty indoors is acceptable. Instead of encouraging puppy to go outside, it actually causes confusion. Therefore, you should consider paper training as a last resort. Crate Training Using a crate to potty train your new puppy is an excellent and very effective method. With crate training, your puppy will, in time learn to wait to do its business outdoors. It is important to remember that puppies, just like babies, have very small bladders. For this reason, getting your puppy to wait through night without needing to go outside will take a few months. This is normal and requires patience, love, and support on your part. With crate training, right type of behavior is encouraged in your new puppy. Schedule Regardless of breed, with dedication and a lot of patience, your puppy will learn rules. Keep in mind that age does play a role in how easy your dog will complete process. Since a small puppy eats more meals than an adult dog does, you can expect more trips outside. For this reason, you will need to set up a schedule that coordinates with puppy’s age.Typically, a small puppy will need to go outside about every two to three hours. Although you will need to establish your own schedule, following is what you might expect during potty training period. 7:00 a.m. – Take puppy outside immediately after waking up 7:15 a.m. – Feed and water puppy inside a crate large enough for puppy to move around 7:45 a.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty 11:45 a.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty 12:00 p.m. – Feed and water puppy inside its crate 12:45 p.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty Around this time, your puppy will be tired and in need of a nap. Gently place your puppy inside crate. To make it feel more comfortable and secure, add in an old sweatshirt of cozy blanket, a couple of soft toys, and then allow puppy to rest for about an hour. Chances are that you will not need to coax it much since puppies sleep often. Remember, this schedule is to encourage a pattern, making potty training easier. 2:30 p.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty 4:30 p.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty 5:00 p.m. – Feed and water puppy inside crate 5:30 p.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty About an hour after your puppy has had dinner, take it for a short walk and then spend quality time playing and enjoying it. This quality time will help build bond and a relationship of trust, which only helps to strengthen desire of puppy to please its master. In addition, playtime is excellent for socializing puppy while helping it sleep longer during night. 7:30 p.m. – Remove puppy’s water and any food for night 8:30 p.m. – Take puppy outside to go potty 9:30 p.m. – Put puppy in crate to sleep More than likely, your new puppy will not be able to go all night without taking care of business. Listen for any restlessness or whining, a sure sign that puppy needs to go outside. While process can be inconvenient and tiresome since you never know what time puppy will awaken, with consistency, your puppy will learn much quicker. Remember, if puppy should have an accident in its crate, never administer punishment – it was just an accident. Most puppies that mess in their cage feel embarrassed and ashamed. If your puppy has an accident, take it outside anyway so association is reinforced. Then, clean crate, add fresh bedding, and again, tuck little one in for night. Word Association During potty training process, your puppy will begin to give you some kind of signal that it needs to go outside to potty. Your job is to learn those signals and sooner better. You may notice your puppy walking in circles, walking toward door, sitting and staring at you, pawing at you, sniffing ground, and so on.
| | No Need For BSL- Breed Specific Legislation Written by Racheal Stacknick
No Need For BSL- Breed Specific Legislation Written by: Rachael Stacknick Member of: www.web-rover.com In short breed specific legislation is a quick fix for a growing problem, only thing is it does not fix problem. Many cities, countries, states and provinces have now jumped on band wagon to implement BSL. Most recently Ontario and there ban against "Pit Bull's". What people do not realize is that it will not stop here, bites will not stop, government will not stop banning breeds. Sure ok, they get rid of pit bull's (which i do not agree with), so maybe bite statistics will go down for a while. Then people start getting other dogs (of any breed) and start training them to fight and attack.....what do you do now? It is a vicious cycle (no pun intended) that will never end. Some places have even brought in hyenas and apes and are training them to take place of their fighting dogs!........It all comes down to government making a hasty decision and not listening to experts....and irresponsible ownership. So what is irresponsible ownership you say??? Well, this could be a long explanation, but I will try to keep it to point. Irresponsible ownership primarily is: 1. Irresponsible breeding 2. Leaving your dog outside chained up with no human contact(or very little) 3. Training your dog to fight 4. Not giving your dog proper socialization with all kinds of people varying in age colour and sex 5. Walking your dog off leash in public 6. Not Spaying and neutering 7. Not keeping your pet's shots up to date 8. Not having your dog licensed by city 9. Not keeping your dog on a proper diet 10. Not having a properly fenced yard 11. Not having your dog obedience trained (These are in no particular order) These are just things off of top of my head.....there are many more, but most of it is common sense or at least should be. Do not get me wrong though. I am so very sorry to people who have been severly injured by a dog or have lost someone because of a dog attack. But this happens with all breeds of dogs, from smallest to largest. We only hear about bites and attacks from those dogs that are on someone's hit list.....primarily, pit bull's, rottweilers, dobermans, german shepherds, and akitas. We dont normally hear about chiuahiua that bit jimmy last week and drew blood, or shihtzu that bit julie last night and drew blood (names and breeds here are just an example)...why don't we hear about them? Because they are not on hit list......yet. Every dog has capability of severly injuring someone....they all have same set of teeth, so criminals, drug ops and so on will keep training whatever dog they can get a hold of to be there attack dog's, and soon, when there are no more dog's they will move to another animal.....surprise surprise.
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