Lucky Dog Lessons

by Brandon McMillan

  Step 2. Once you’re outside, tell your dog to GET BUSY and wait him out. You can use a different command if you like, but choose a word or phrase you can use consistently every time you want your dog to do his business. While you wait, keep giving that command, knowing your dog does have to go because he’s been cooped up overnight. When your dog relieves himself, wait for him to finish, repeat the command once more, then praise him and give him a treat. Timing is key, so give the treat right after he does his business. Waiting too long will have no effect because he won’t make the connection between his action and the reward. Have that treat locked and loaded, but in your pocket, not in your hand. If your dog has his eyes—and mind—on a treat, he may get distracted from doing his business.

  Step 3. Once your dog has finished his business outside (preferably both kinds), he can go back in the house for some well-earned supervised free time. The key word here is supervised. Just like in Step 1, one of your most important jobs is to make sure no accidents happen. Keep your dog in the same room with you, keep an eye on him, and set a timer for an hour (thirty to forty-five minutes for small breeds). At the end of that free playtime, put your dog back in his crate or pen. Set your timer for two hours, and at the end of it, put the dog on a leash and go straight outside to begin the process again. If necessary, you can adjust these times to be a little bit shorter or longer based on your dog’s track record for being trustworthy in the house and his size. In general, large dogs can handle longer periods of time between trips outdoors than small dogs.

  This three-part rotation of crate time, outside time, and indoor free time is the house-training triangle. If you follow the steps consistently for several days, your dog will learn not only that outside is the only acceptable place to do his business but also that the command GET BUSY means he needs to do so sooner than later. If you live in a cold or rainy climate, you’ll be glad to be able to speed up that whole part of the process in bad weather.

  Step 4. There’s an important tweak you’ll be making during the process of gradually training your dog to understand the larger concept that outside is the only place where it’s okay to relieve himself. Every day, your goal is to eliminate a little crate time and add a little free time to his schedule. If your dog does well with the one-hour increments of free time on day one, increase to ninety-minute increments on day two, then two hours on day three. After that, start taking fifteen minutes away from the crate time and adding thirty minutes to your dog’s free time each day. By the end of a week, your dog should be spending thirty to sixty minutes in the crate and around five hours free in the house. Once he’s reached that milestone or a similar pattern, you can start to eliminate the crate completely.

  Training Tips to Remember

  As always, there are a few tips that can help make the technique successful.

  Supervise Your Dog’s Free Time Until He Learns It’s Only Okay to GET BUSY Outside. This is a must! If your dog does have an accident and you catch him in the act, give him a quick, stern NO. You can also use the technique I outline below for marking to combat this problem. However, if you don’t catch your dog in the act and happen to find a mess an hour or two after the fact, you may as well just clean it up because reprimanding after the fact is pointless. Your dog will have no idea what he’s done to make you angry. So, for best results, don’t let your dog out of your sight for the first few days of training.

  Feed Your Dog in the Crate about Ten Minutes Before You Take Him Outside to Do His Business. Most dogs’ (especially puppies’) digestive systems get moving pretty quickly after they eat, and if you time this correctly, you’ll help your dog learn the GET BUSY command more quickly and save yourself any unpleasant cleanup.

  Make the Crate an Inviting Place to Be. A crate isn’t supposed to be a dungeon; it’s a place to learn and rest and have a positive experience. Toys, chews, and comfortable blankets and dog beds all help convey that to your dog. (I’d recommend staying away from chews that dissolve or real bones with meat on them during this training. These tend to speed up a dog’s digestive system and can make them have to go more often or more urgently.)

  Stick to the Plan. Many dogs—especially puppies—quickly decide that the first couple of days in a crate are a great time to stage a protest. These dogs will bark and bark (and bark). You have two choices for dealing with this—and neither of them is giving in and taking your dog out of the crate. Either go to your inner quiet place and ignore it, or use a penny bottle or a Shake & Break to teach your dog the QUIET command (you can read how in Chapter 14). A lot of people give up on house-training because of this complication, but that only teaches the dog that barking excessively gets him what he wants. Stick to the plan and win this battle of wills.

  Be Motivating. Maintain a positive outlook when you put your dog into and take him out of his pen. So many people get caught up in yelling or punishing their dogs during housebreaking, but in the end, that approach just slows the process and upsets both owner and dog. You want to make the teaching of this—the most important of all dog etiquette lessons—as positive an experience as possible. That way your dog will not only master it but also continue to view you as both a teacher and a friend.

  Let’s follow up on those bladder muscles. Being in the crate all but forces your dog to hold his urine, which in turn strengthens his bladder muscles. This is one of the secrets to this method’s success. By enforcing regularly scheduled crate times, you give your puppy’s bladder muscles a chance to get stronger and more controlled.

  Variation for Indoor-Only Training. I’ve been asked by a number of dog owners if there’s an alternative version of this training for dogs who use indoor house-training pads. I don’t use this tool in my own training, but if you are dealing with circumstances like inclement weather or a ninth-floor apartment, they may be a key part of your house-training routine. If you use these pads, you can substitute them for the outdoor section of your dog’s house-training triangle.

  To start, put the training pads directly outside your dog’s crate or exercise pen, leading him to them each time he leaves his enclosure and using the GET BUSY command just as described above. Once your dog becomes habituated to the pads, move them a short distance away and make sure he gets to them each time he relieves himself. Eventually, you can set up a sizable exercise pen for your dog with a sleeping/play area on one end, and the house-training pads on the opposite side.

  If you’re using training pads as part of your house-training routine, start by placing them immediately outside of your dog’s crate or exercise pen.

  One Final Note. If you follow these steps carefully and consistently, the house-training triangle works on upwards of 90 percent of dogs in a week or so. However, when it comes to this critical skill, a lot of variables can affect how long it takes for a dog to become reliable. For example, size matters in housebreaking. If you have a very small dog or a very big house, it may take extra time for your dog to get the hang of the rules. It only makes sense that a small dog like a Maltese, Yorkie, or Chihuahua would need a little more time to understand that all the indoor space around him is off-limits for relieving himself. After all, he doesn’t need much space at all. Ditto for a big dog in a really big house. If you’ve got a dozen rooms and you want to teach your dog that all of them are part of his living space and none of them suitable for use as a toilet, you’ll basically have to teach him one room at a time, gradually expanding his access to the house.

  Other dogs who may need extra time to housebreak include young puppies and rescued dogs. The younger the puppy, the less mature his mind is going to be, and the less developed his bladder muscles are, too. A rescued dog who is new to you may have been outside or in a kennel his whole life and then suddenly finds he has a new set of rules he needs to follow. That takes extra time, too. Same thing for a dog who’s always been an apartment dweller using pee pads who has to learn to go outside.

  Lastly, senior dogs may have the will to follow the rules but not the control they o
nce had. If your senior dog develops a new house-training problem, be sure you check with his veterinarian to rule out a medical issue like a urinary tract infection. If the cause is just the natural deterioration that comes with age, make sure your old dog has more frequent opportunities to go outside to do his business. If he’s been housebroken all his life and suddenly can’t completely control his bladder or bowels anymore, chances are his accidents in the house are even more stressful for him than they are for you.

  The Problem: Indoor Marking

  We’ve all seen it and we all feel the same about it: nobody likes a dog who marks in the house. This nasty habit stains furniture and makes your home smell like a kennel. It’s definitely one of the drawbacks of having a male dog. A lot of dog owners don’t even realize a dog is marking until the day they notice one area, and then another—and then I get calls from people who’ve suddenly figured out the dog has been marking in the house for months. It’s a discouraging moment when you realize your dog isn’t as house-trained as you thought. Fortunately, this is a correctable bad habit. I’ve created a reliable technique and used it on countless dogs over the years, and 90 percent or more pick it up within the first week. Those are pretty good odds, so let’s get started.

  A Step-by-Step Plan

  You’ll need a few tools to deal with this problem, and a couple of them may surprise you:

  •A leash

  •A flat collar or harness

  •A cinder block

  •A baby camera

  •A UV black light

  Don’t be intimidated by those last couple of items; any cheap baby camera from a garage sale will do (you can even rig up the webcam on a laptop or phone if you have a way to monitor it). You can pick up a new ultraviolet black light flashlight in the ten- to fifteen-dollar range at any discount hardware store or pet-supply store. Now that you’re all geared up, let’s break this down.

  Step 1. The first thing you have to do is determine where problem areas already exist. If you’ve just figured out your dog is marking, he may have been hitting the same spots for months. During that time, those areas become, in your dog’s mind, part of his territory—places where he should continually reassert his ownership. Locating all these areas is the first step in solving the problem. After dark, pull out your black light, turn it on, and shine it around each room in your house. Those glowing areas you couldn’t see with the naked eye? They’re not the auras of passing ghosts—no such luck. They’re most likely urine stains that identify the places where your dog’s been tagging your belongings with his signature scent. Not sure whether your dog is really guilty? Consider the location of the stains. Typically, dogs mark on the corners of furniture and fixtures, in spots low enough for them to hit by lifting a leg. Often, there will be matching stains on the floor beneath the “target” where urine has dripped onto the floor. Wiping a suspect location with a dry white rag and finding sticky yellow residue will confirm your suspicions.

  Before you can move on to the next step in this process, you’ll have to steel your nerves and do a little dirty work. Those spots need to be cleaned—thoroughly enough that the odor comes out of the furniture, carpet, or other area. This may take a couple of passes if your dog’s been using a space for a long time. Whatever it takes, this is the root of the problem and must be dealt with before training. As long as an area smells like your dog’s scent, his instincts are going to tell him to keep marking it. By cleaning those places, you’re taking away the smell and throwing him slightly off his game. Once you’ve cleaned the areas as best you can, you can begin the real training.

  Step 2. Next, set up your monitoring camera. Put it in a room you’re sure is totally cleaned of previous markings and let your dog roam free while you watch on the monitor from somewhere out of sight. Markers with really bad habits will likely show their cards in a minute or so, especially when in a room alone. This is often the first thing they do as they pass through a room. Other dogs will take a little longer. Whatever the case, wait for your moment. Once your dog lifts his leg on something, immediately walk into the room and reprimand him with the NO command, showing him the area he just marked. Make your reprimand short and sweet because it’s the next step that will make all the difference, and you need to get to it immediately. Once you’ve given the NO command, take the leash, attach it to your dog’s flat collar or harness, and tie the other end to the corner of what he’s just marked. Be sure to tie it with enough slack so your dog can stand up and lie down, but no more than that. It’s vital that you measure this correctly for it to be effective. If your dog marks an area that you can’t tie the leash to (like the middle of a couch), haul out that cinder block we discussed, place it right next to the marked area, and wrap the leash around it. Now give your dog thirty minutes of supervised time to think about what just happened while he sits next to his handiwork. During this time, you need to ignore him, even if—especially if—he starts to cry or bark. If you have to pull out your penny bottle or Shake & Break and give him a QUIET command, by all means do it. There is no negotiating during this process. The dog was guilty of the crime, and he’s got to do his time. Once your dog has spent the entire thirty minutes in place, unclip him. Do not praise, reward, or even speak baby talk to him while you set him free. This is a discipline exercise and must be treated seriously, so the best thing to say is nothing at all. Once your dog has been turned loose, you’ll need to thoroughly clean the area he marked to get rid of the scent.

  Lulu attached to the table leg she marked. Use only a flat collar or harness, make sure the leash has enough slack for your dog to lie down and stand up, and always supervise your dog during this process.

  Step 3. Repeat the whole process, starting with you observing your dog on the monitor. Be sure to quickly bust him in the act the next time he makes his mark, then follow through with the same simple, to-the-point consequence. Repeat this process for as long as it takes. Many dogs learn the lesson in just a couple of days. Others might take a week or so. The theory behind this is simple. Dogs instinctively hate being near their own mess, so by making them stand next to it for a period of time, you’re utilizing a form of reverse psychology. Basically, you’re giving them more of what they’ve claimed as their own than they’ve bargained for—turning their positive association into a negative one. It’s kind of like the old-school parenting practice of making a teenager who gets caught smoking smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. This consequence isn’t as harsh as that one, but it does make a firm and clear point about a completely unacceptable behavior that needs to be dealt with.

  Training Tips to Remember

  There are a few vital things to point out here.

  Be Sure the Leash Has the Right Amount of Slack. The leash should have just enough slack to allow your dog to lie down and stand up, but no more. If you give too much slack, your dog will simply walk to the end of the leash and be far enough away from his mess to avoid learning the lesson. Too little slack and he won’t be able to lie down. This is not a corporal punishment—your dog’s only discomfort during this training should come from his disdain at having to be so close to his own excrement—not from any physical distress from being tied on a leash that doesn’t allow him to move.

  Never Connect Your Dog to a Choke or Prong Collar while Doing This Training. A regular flat collar or harness is all that’s needed.

  Supervise Your Dog During This Process. You can simply be doing chores around the house or reading, but please do not leave the house while your dog is tied up.

  Stop Leash Chewing. If you see your dog chewing on the leash during this time-out (and a lot of dogs do), give him a quick, firm NO. If he persists, rub the leash with a little lemon to discourage him.

  Last, but Not Least, Be Consistent and Patient. Giving up on your dog only reinforces the bad behavior you’re targeting. This is the main reason dogs get away with so many bad habits—not because they’re bad dogs, but because they’re not getting good instruction. Remember that you are the owne
r and the teacher. So be the best, most consistent teacher possible. The face you show your dog is the face that’ll be shown back to you.

  One Lucky Dog

  It didn’t take long for Chance to master his house-training and learn the 7 Common Commands. He was ready to go to his new home with a marketing executive who couldn’t wait to be Mom to a new dog and show off her puppy at the office. Christina was a very special adopter. She’d already rescued one dog from a shelter, and that puppy did not survive a bout of distemper he’d contracted while he was homeless. Christina was devastated but still willing to put her heart on the line and adopt again. I wanted things to be perfect for her and for Chance. While Christina was away on vacation, I had artificial turf installed in the dirt lot outside her office building to create a yard. When she got back from her trip, I was able to give her not just a new dog but also a new lawn! Chance immediately showed her he knew how to GET BUSY on command. And just like that, they were ready to start their new life together.

  Courtesy of Litton Syndications, Inc.

  Outtake

  When I was in my early twenties, I had a client who asked me to watch his house and his two Great Danes who I’d been training. Both dogs were struggling with house-training, so I figured this was a perfect opportunity to teach them, once and for all. I stood there in the driveway with the dogs by my side and waved good-bye to the client and his wife. Later, they called and made me promise to keep the dogs off the rug in the den. It was a beautiful $10,000 Persian work of art, so of course I vowed to keep it safe.