Paper Training Your Dog

Paper training your dog is a specific form of house training. You're teaching her which area in the house is set aside for her to eliminate. When you paper train your dog, you teach her to only eliminate on newspapers which can be discarded after each use.

There are two ways of effectively, efficiently, and quickly house training your dog.

Paper training is one, the other is crate training.

Crate training is based on a dog's basic dislike of soiling where she sleeps, and involves curtailing the dog's movement by putting her in a crate, or small indoor kennel, whenever she cannot be actively supervised.

Paper training and crate training are not of the same training program. Crate training is where you are training your dog to only go outside, paper training is where you are training your dog to only go on newspapers inside the house.

It's important to realize that you can't train your dog to do both at the same time. If you try, she'll get confused, and you'll only prolong the training process.

You can decide to use paper training as an intermediate step for eventually only eliminating outside but this is not recommended. It's much less confusing for the dog, and more effective, to just choose one method.

Crate training and paper training are both effective ways to house train your dog.

Generally, it's recognized that crate training is the fastest way of house training your dog, but it calls for a considerable investment in time and effort, which is not always an option for everyone.

When Paper training is the best option

You don't have easy access to a yard or outside space.

It's not easy for you to take your dog outside for any other reason, for instance, elderly or unwell dog owners.

You have a full time job, or other time consuming commitments, meaning that you're not capable of spending the large amounts of time supervising your dog that crate training demands.

You're planning on training your dog to go outside the house eventually, but not just yet.

When Crate training is the best option

You are able to spend a lot of time during your puppy's first weeks of house training in actively supervising her, and are available during the day to let her out of the crate at two or three hour intervals

You prefer to train your dog to go outside the house right from the start

You have a medium to large size dog, in which case it's simply not feasable to paper train your dog unless you want to be flooded out.

Paper training isn't suitable for all dogs. It really only works for small males and small to medium females, since a dog larger than these just produces too much waste for the newspaper to handle.

How to paper train your dog

First, choose a convenient area of the house for your dog to use as the elimination area. It's best to choose somewhere without carpet. Most people select a corner of the kitchen or laundry, since these rooms normally have tiled or linoleum floors for easy cleaning.

Spread newspaper thickly in a corner of this room. Initially, you'll need to make the newspaper area pretty big, since your pup has no idea that she's intended to go on the paper at all.

To make certain that she's able to eliminate only on the paper, you'll either have to restrict her movements to the papered area of the floor or paper the whole floor, which is a feasible alternative if the paper room is small and there's not much through traffic.

At the start, your puppy will eliminate pretty much at random on the paper. It's important for the paper training procedure that she's only allowed to go on the paper. You need her to form a firm connection between the feeling of paper under her toes, and relieving herself.

After a week or two, you can start to reduce the papered area of the floor, permitting her more access to unpapered surfaces.

Do this bit by bit, a couple of sheets at a time. If you've given her enough time to get used to the paper, she should naturally confine her elimination areas as the papered area shrinks.

If she starts to eliminate off the paper, then increase the area of the papered floor surface to the size it was when she was still eliminating only on the paper, and give her more time to get used to it before beginning to reduce the papered area again.

If this does happen, it doesn't mean that the paper training isn't working, it just means you're moving a bit too fast for your puppy's capabilities.

Most dogs take a couple of months to get used to the paper training method. Until she's reliably going on the papers only, you should restrict her admittance to the rest of the house unless you're actively supervising her.

In general, your puppy should be confined to the papered area unless she's sleeping, eating, or being played with or is actively supervised.

Things to remember

Praise her whenever you see her eliminating on the paper. Wait until she's finished and praise her, pet her, and give her a treat.

If you see her eliminating off the paper, this is really a great opportunity for training development. Disturb her with a clap, a loud shout or slap your open palm loudly on the wall. This will startle her and in most instances, she'll actually stop mid-toilet and hunch down. Pick her up at once and put her on the paper. When she finishes, praise her hugely and give her a treat.

If you discover an accident after the fact, such as a wet spot or pile on the unpapered floor, you've missed your window of opportunity to teach her not to do this. You can't reprimand her in this case, because she won't realize what she's done wrong. All you can do is clean it up and supervise her more carefully. If this is happening a lot, you've given her too much freedom in the house and not adequate supervision, so cut back her access to the unpapered floor, and increase the supervision.

Feed her at specific, scheduled times each day. This will encourage her to develop an elimination timetable.

For further information on house training your dog, including a detailed look at paper training and crate training, check out The Ultimate House Training Guide. It's the complete dog-house-training guide and comes highly recommended.

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