How Do I Train My Puppy to Use Only One Small Area of the Yard for Elimination?

 

This is a question we get all the time from dog owners concerned about their lawns.  Unfortunately, the common practice of restricting a puppy’s choice of bathroom locations to only one small area may hurt your housebreaking efforts. Why? Because the key with housebreaking is to form a habit of elimination outdoors. Puppies who are permitted to travel around in the yard and choose their spots, more quickly develop preferences to go to the bathroom outside. 

The feel of grass under their paws, the smells of the outdoors, and the ability to move around and choose their spots, all contribute to faster progress in housetraining. 

Some puppies are a bit fussy about other things as well - like weather, surfaces, and proximity to the owner. For these dogs, adding yet another roadblock to housebreaking is even more risky. 

So as a general rule, we do not recommend attempting to teach your puppy to only use one small area of the yard for elimination. Taking him to the same spot over and over might eventually teach him to prefer that particular area, but it is also likely to slow down your housebreaking efforts.  In addition to the "moving around" factor, Lindsay's Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training (Vol. 3, page 79-80)  gives another reason for not using one small spot over and over during puppy training: "In the morning, the puppy should be taken to the same general location [e.g. the back yard] and vocally prompted to eliminate...As the training process progresses, the puppy should be encouraged to eliminate in different locations near and away from the home, thus preventing the behavior from becoming overly contextualized to particular substrates and locations. [emphasis mine]."  

This advice might not be welcomed by dog owners who are concerned about burn spots on their lawns. The good news is that some dogs will naturally seeks the perimeter of the yard for elimination. If so, that’s great. Also, male dogs who have been neutered after reaching sexual maturity will insist on lifting their legs on vertical surfaces (fences, trees and shrubs), which also tends to reduce the number of burn spots on the lawn. But for most of us, some urine-nitrogen-burn-spots on our lawns are an inevitable part of dog ownership.  

  

Train Dog to Ring Bell for Potty?

Effective housebreaking protocols include things such as supervision, consistency, scheduling and confinement - not training the dog to ring a bell.

In "The Handbook of Applied Dog Training and Behavior, Volume Three"  Steven R. Lindsay, M.A., explains: 

"Teaching puppies to give a signal to go outside is a common, but questionable house-training practice. While appearing reasonable and useful at first glance, encouraging puppies to give such signals may conflict with the objective of training them to hold and eliminate in accordance with an arbitrary schedule. Effective bowel and bladder control require that puppies learn to endure some amount of discomfort – an aspect of house training that is not necessarily served by training puppies to perform a signal to get outdoors on demand. Furthermore, such need-to-go signals depend on the owner being present to respond – a state of affairs that can rarely be maintained on a consistent basis.

An unfortunate outcome of such training is the development of common elimination problems later. Unable to get the owner’s attention with the elimination signal, a dog may go to the door after and after a moment just turn around and eliminate nearby or run off to another room before eliminating, thereby reflecting the pattern previously established in association with the need-to-go signal, viz., give signal and then eliminate.

Finally, many puppies rapidly learn to extend and generalize the need-to-go signal with a need-to-whatever-whenever signal, prompting the owner to go outside for purposes other than elimination. Such puppies learn that barking or pawing at bells can get them outside for play and other activities having nothing to do with elimination."