House-Breaking Your Dog

I've read a lot of different things about how to house-train your dog. The newspaper thing makes no sense at all to me. It takes a long time to do and teaches your dog there are places in the house it's OK to go.

What I've done with my dogs so far, and what we're doing with Biscuit now, is kind of an adaptation of crate training. It's pretty intensive in the first week, but it's quick and very effective.
We let the dog out about 15 minutes after he's eaten or had water, immediately when he wakes up from a nap, and every couple hours during the day if he's playing or out in the open.

We watch him actively. If he's circling, we take him out right away. If he starts to go inside (which hasn't happened yet with Biscuit), we grab him abruptly (for girls, they stop peeing...we'll see what happens with a boy) and get him outside right away. We don't yell at him, as that teaches him to be ashamed to go in front of you, and he'll be more likely to try to find a place to sneak and go, and less likely to go when you're outside with him.

If we can't watch him, he's in his crate. (Which is just his size - dogs aren't likely to go to the bathroom in their sleeping area, but if you get a big crate they can have a sleeping and a bathroom area.) But if they are in a crate that's their size they should be able to hold it about 1 hour for each month old they are, plus 1 extra hour, from what I've read.

Every time we let him out, we ring a bell. We have one upstairs and one on the back door, so if we're upstairs we ring both. This will teach him quickly how to ask when he needs to go out. When he's outside, he can't come back in until he's done something. At first this can take a while, but within a day or two I've found that dogs quickly learn what they're supposed to do outside, and that helps them associate the action with the right place. When he's going, we praise him. We use the key word "potty," so we say, "Good potty!" One he learns what the word means, we'll use "Go potty" as encouragement to get him to go. But for now, to help him learn it, we only say it while he's going.

We've found this to be a very effective method of house breaking. With Peanut it was under a week before she was 95% house broken, just a few accidents here and there after that. You have to be willing to be vigilant about it, but you should find that your dog quickly learns the right place to go potty.