16 Nov Tips For House Training Your Adult Dog

Congratulations on your new adult dog family member! That’s exciting news! House training can definitely be demanding, for newborn puppies all the way up to silver seniors, and it’s typically priority number one for most owners. Older dogs can sometimes be especially challenging to house train, requiring added patience. With time, you’ll find your new family member will learn this new skill and comfortably fit into daily routines.  

Here are some ideas to try:

1. If possible, be home during this time to shorten your dog’s learning curve. It’s easier to solve problems if you’re able to be home with your new dog for several days, until they understand their new routine. This is because — ideally — you’ll want to take your dog out every two hours to potty.

2. Be consistent: go to the same spot in the yard; use a keyword, special phrase, or short command (“Find a spot”) to prompt them to pee or poop. Taking your dog out first thing in the morning, immediately after every meal, and before you all go to bed, is a great way to build regularity, confidence, and trust between you and your new adult dog.

Consistency, ultimately, will help make it easier (and quicker) for your new dog to learn a regular routine.

3. Be patient: when they go, praise them! Give your dog time to sniff, circle, and smell outside. As soon as he eliminates, give him a treat with a lot of high-pitched, happy-voiced praise and petting. The following is key: be silly and over-the-top, bounce up and down and act happy, as though they just did the most amazing thing! Your dog will soon learn to want to please you.

So the easier it is for them to recognize how happy going potty outside makes you, the more eager they will be to go outside for you again.

4. Be understanding. If you catch your dog in the act of going potty indoors, try to get them outside as quickly as possible and wait with them in that same spot in the yard until they finish eliminating. If they don’t go again, take them out in 10-20 minutes and try again. If you aren’t able to catch them in the act indoors, clean up the mess using an enzyme cleaner (ammonia cleaners actually smell like urine to dogs and they’ll regularly want to mark that same area again).

Please note: scolding your dog after the fact doesn’t help because what they did was something that happened in the past, and they won’t be able to make the connection to what upset you. Getting angry will only strain your relationship with your dog and make training more difficult.

5. If you are using a crate and your dog is anxious (which is probably true if you find he’s peeing in his crate, for example) getting and using a Kong toy is a great idea! Stuff the Kong toy in layers, with various foods or treats. Start with the small hole: stuff it with a small spoonful of peanut butter or cream cheese. Then break kibbles into small bits and stuff them from the larger hole into the peanut butter and freeze it. Then pull it out of the freezer and add more peanut butter, kibbles, or a piece of dried liver, and (leaving space at the very end of the Kong) freeze again. Then fill the toy with food that’s soft and easy to reach, maybe even a dab of honey, so your dog has an incentive to keep digging into it as soon as you give it to him.

What we love about this is that you can try various combinations of wet food, gravy, noodles, rice, and mashed potatoes, mixed with kibbles, etc., and freeze. 

Tie the Kong toy to a spot inside his crate; this will reinforce that the area is a good place to hang out and play. If your dog only gets the Kong toy while in the crate, that will be his extra special reward for hanging out in there while you’re gone and hopefully lessen his anxiety while you’re away. When his anxiety decreases, over time, your dog can play with the Kong elsewhere in your house.

Some other things to keep in mind…

Senior dogs will tend to have accidents as they age, with female dogs tending to have more than males. 

Male dogs do like to mark their territory, especially if they’re new; however, with time they should be able to learn your preferred place for them to pee outside. If your senior dog has never been discouraged from marking indoors the habit could be difficult to break. Neutered males are known to mark territory much less often. If you take your dog on moderate to long walks and allow him to mark as much as he wants along the way — he may not feel the need to mark indoors. 

House training may take awhile and never be perfect, but we hope these tips help improve the situation. Best of luck! Let us know how it goes! 🙂