Re-Housetraining Your Adult Dog
Do you have an adult dog you need to re-housetrain? If you do, this is one dog problem that can be overcome, but there are a few things to do that are crucial to success. You can do it, but supervision is important. So what do you need to do?
Beginning Your Re-Housetraining For Your Mature Dog
At the first sign that your adult dog is going to eliminate, by excessive sniffing of a particular area, you should immediately take it outside. The reason is obvious. How can you praise a dog for doing something right if you are not there to see it? The owner should go outside with his/her dog. Supervision is crucial at this time!
Good Dog Behavior Deserves Praise
Somebody must place it in the proper place for elimination, so that the action can be followed by praise. Somebody must be there to give praise when the dog exhibits good dog behavior. Dogs learn by associating their actions with pleasing or displeasing results. It is not enough that somebody is there to chastise and verbally admonish the dog for doing wrong; someone must be there to praise the dog for doing the right thing.
The praise will be relatively meaningless unless it comes from the leader of the pack. This is you, its owner. If you fail to live up to your responsibilities, then you cannot justifiably blame your mature dog for failing his housetraining. Someone must show it the way. In the dog’s mind, it only counts when the teacher is the person that it loves and in whom it has confidence.
When you take your dog outside and fifteen minutes have elapsed without him eliminating, bring him back inside the house, but the supervision should not stop. In fact, it should be consistent. When the dog drops his nose to the floor and starts sniffing again, the owner should once again take him outside.
When your dog eliminates outside, you should be right there when it happens and praise it, then bring it back inside the house immediately. It is the same method that should be used when dealing with a puppy. Praise and correction are the keys to successfully communicate with your dog.
It takes four days for the average dog to learn something new. For the mature dog or puppy that has forgotten something, it takes four days for that dog to relearn the good behavior. Supervision is crucial to your success. The dog must be kept under constant watch while indoors so that positive corrective action can be taken.
Dog Housetraining Methods Is The Same For All Dogs
The methods are identical for the dog that has never been housetrained. When a person adopts a mature dog from a pound, the dog is brought home and inside the house where he immediately eliminates on the floor. Training is essential. It is much easier to train a mature dog than it is a puppy. Any dog, whether a year or twelve years old, can be trained to eliminate outdoors, if the four days rule is followed through. The four days required for learning to take place in your dog’s mind, should provide you with all the necessary patience.
Regardless of your dog’s age, praise is the communicating factor. Too many people feel that chastisement is the key. This is not true! Praise is the main ingredient, but in order to praise the dog for doing the right action, one must be nearby so that you can administer the praise.
There are five basic principles that a knowledgeable dog trainer always follows: Patience, knowledge, repetition, praise and correction. By following these principals, you will have your housetrained dog back in less than seven days.
How To House Train An Adult Dog – Is It Too Late?
If your dog, who has been adequately housetrained as a puppy, starts exhibiting undesirable behavior in his advanced years, you might need to start considering re-housetraining your adult dog. Occasional accidents and bad dog behavior in adult dogs is not really a serious cause for concern. All you have to do is try to figure out what triggers these behaviors and communicate with your dog in order to solve the problem.
Many adult dogs who regress into undesirable behavior usually do so because of the lack of attention from the owner. If the dog is left to his own resources and given complete freedom for a very long time, it is very likely that he will forget all the training that he has undergone as a puppy. For example, if he starts urinating on the living room carpet and no one is punishing him for it, then he might think that it is now an acceptable thing to do.
With prolonged lack of monitoring, the dog will simply do whatever he wants. When you finally notice that this is happening, the only option you will have is re-housetraining your adult dog.
House Training An Older Dog
The process of re-housetraining your adult dog is not that different to training a puppy for the first time. It does require a lot more monitoring and a lot more patience, especially if the dog has been allowed complete freedom for quite some time. The plus side, however, is that a mature dog already understands the value of praise and correction. Therefore, he will be more likely to obey your commands and will be able to relearn everything at a relatively fast pace.
Scolding the dog for forgetting his puppy lessons will not do any good. It is, after all, your fault as the owner that you let the undesirable behavior go on for as long as it had. Instead, you just have to supervise the dog closely to make sure that no further accidents occur and that the dog always behaves exactly as you want him to. Just make sure that you still give your dog enough space and freedom so that he doesn’t feel too watched.
Close monitoring is essential to the process of housetraining an adult dog, especially if the dog is sneaky and tries to escape your watching eye as much as he can. Since you can’t be following your dog around all day, it would be wise to ask the help of other family members in this task.