How To Paper Train Your Puppy

Before you begin paper training your puppy you will need to make sure that it is the right method for you. A common mistake that many dog owners seem to make is starting to house train their puppy using newspapers or puppy training pads when the overall goal is to train their puppy to go potty outside.

If you are going to start paper training your puppy, you may want to consider if you will be doing it for the rest of your puppy’s life. Once your pup gets used to going on papers in your home, it will be really hard to get them to stop. This will make it harder for you to house train your puppy in the long run if you really want him to potty outside when he is older.

It’s not all bad though, in fact paper training can be quite useful if you have a small dog and live in an apartment or you have a very young puppy that has not yet learned how to control his bladder or bowels.

If you have decided that paper training is a good choice for you then there are some things you will need to do before you get started. The first thing you will need to decide is where you will put his papers. You may want to use one corner of your kitchen or bathroom in an out of the way place, just be sure it is away from his food and out of the way of traffic in your home.

I find it better to first put down a sheet of plastic so that the urine does not soak through the papers and into the floor. You also want to make sure that your puppy has all the room he needs to be able to go potty without missing the papers so you may want to section off a 3 foot by 4 foot area.

Now you can take your puppy to that spot in the morning, right after he eats or drinks, and anytime during the day that your puppy looks fidgety or that he might need to go potty.

I find that it helps to speak gently to your puppy and let him know that it is ok to use the papers to go potty on. Every time he goes in his spot, praise and reward him for a job well done.

Follow the same routine everyday and watch your puppy carefully so that he does not go off the paper. It will take some patients when doing this so it is important to keep praising and rewarding your puppy for going on his papers and correcting his mistakes.

You should change the newspaper regularly but leave one soiled piece on the top of the freshly changed papers. Your puppy will smell his scent and be more likely to go in that spot again.

As soon as your pup gets used to going on the papers, you can put him down a short distance from them after he eats or drinks and say something like “go potty” and let him go over to the newspapers and do his business.

This is generally the time you would start taking him outside to go to the bathroom if you where house training him and it is very important to let your puppy go over to the papers after he is done eating and drinking so that he gets used to it.

Within a few days or so your puppy will get the hang of it and you can reduce the size of the papers to a smaller section.