Raising a puppy is fun and rewarding. However, it can be intimidating to try and potty train a puppy for the first time. We’ll look at a few simple tips that will help make it easy for you and your new puppy.

Before you bring a new puppy home, try to plan ahead a little bit. If you can, plan to spend the first week at home to help your puppy get situated and comfortable in your house. Lots of people buy a new puppy on the weekend and go back to work on Monday. The first several days will be crucial to get your puppy potty trained as soon as possible, so this is a bad situation to start off in. Planning ahead will allow you to spend time to help make your puppy comfortable and overcome any initial fears of a new environment. This also will give you the time to get your puppy used to a set schedule, which is very important in successful potty training.

It’s also important to understand your puppy won’t be perfect. Expect to deal with some mistakes and accidents; it’s just going to be a part of the process. When you first bring him home, spread out a newspaper next to an outside door. If you catch him peeing inside, move him on to this newspaper, but don’t scold him. The key is going to be to gently teach him where it’s ok to go to the bathroom, and provide lots of positive reinforcement when he uses the right area. Take your puppy outside regularly, and make a big deal out of when he pees outside. Praise him, pet him, and use a consistent word he can get used to. ‘Go potty, good dog’ is a perfect phrase to use, and make sure to give him a lot of attention when he pees or poops outside. The stronger you can make the connection between him peeing outside and you petting him and praising him, the faster potty training will go.

Along with using a consistent phrase, develop a consistent ‘good dog’ tone of voice. Most people do this naturally with animals, so it should be easy to do. Use this tone whenever you’re rewarding your puppy for behaving the correct way, whether it’s potty training or obedience training. If you catch your puppy peeing inside, quickly say ‘No’ in a firm tone, and move him to the newspaper. Once he’s there, then you switch to the ‘good dog’ tone to re-assure him. You can also use a little dab of urine from a mistake to mark the scent on the newspaper, so your puppy can associate peeing with the newspaper.

Following these simple tips will help make potty training your puppy a quick and painless experience, both for you and for your new companion.

There are many type of dog training and many objectives, from basic obedience training to specialized areas including police dog, search and rescue, assistance to people with disabilities and entertainment.

Basic Obedience
This is the fundamental type of training in dogs and all dogs must have some form of obedience training. Basic obedience training makes life simple to your dog and eliminates confusion. Your dog will know his place in the world and understand right from wrong. Dogs seem to really appreciate and thrive on this black and white view of the world.

Entertainment
This form of training capitalizes on tricks to please an audience. They are excellent in resisting distractions coming from various people and even the environment. Some of the tricks being taught are standing, heeling, and moving objects. Training dog for show is hard work, but a lot of fun.

Police Dog
Police dogs were first used in 1899 by the Belgian police force. They serve and protect our communities’ daily, performing skills like protection, narcotics locating, and tracking criminal or missing persons. It takes special dogs and very special trainers to create productive policing teams. This is achieved through intensive and careful training.

Assistance to People with Disabilities
Many people who are blind, handicapped, or those with medical conditions take on the task of training their own assistance dogs. For some, this is the best option, because the dog can be trained to mitigate a disability specific to that particular person. Assistance dog training is quite expensive especially if one prefers a professionally trained and certified pet. One may also opt to take on the task of training them though.

Search and Rescue
A search and rescue dog is trained to locate that scent and help their handlers find people who are lost or missing. With great senses of smell, these types of dog find missing people through air scenting. This simply means tracking down people through their smell by sniffing through the air. Ground smelling may also be used.

Please also check out our other guide on Dog Agility Courses and Dog Agility Jumps.