Dog Obedience Training Blog
3 Free Potty Training Tips
Would you like to be able to TRUST that your dog won’t piss all over your house?
Have you tried scolding him, or rubbing your dog’s nose in his own pee when you catch him… and it just doesn’t seem to be working?
If that sounds like you, then you’re going to LOVE these 3 FREE potty training tips that you can use to fix your dog’s potty training problems once and for all.
Each of these tips are crucial to follow if you ever want your dog to be TRULY potty trained.
Make Your Dog EARN Room Rights
Dogs have a natural instinct and desire to NOT piss on themselves or their territory. This is why you see so many dog trainers talk about why you should crate train your dog.
I call this desire to not eliminate on themselves or their territory, the “Rental Car” mindset. The “Rental Car Mindset states that we always treat things we consider to be our own, better then we treat things that we are merely renting, or don’t consider to be our own.
This certainly is a simple way to think about whether your dog is potty trained, or is NOT potty trained. If he’s potty trained, then you’ve effectively shown him that your home is his territory and, if you haven’t potty trained your dog, you’ll want to follow the exercises below to help teach him to respect his territory.
A very simple example of the Rental Car Mindset at work is when you see dog trainers talk about crate training.
Crate training a dog forces the dog to live in a space for a long period of time without peeing in it, because dogs don’t like peeing on themselves. And when a dog lives in a space long enough without peeing in it, and is also shown WHERE to pee once he leaves “his” space, you end up with a dog who understands where he can and can NOT pee.
But most experts who teach you this technique are leaving out a big part of the story.
What Do You Do After
Your Dog Is Crate Trained?
Simply crate training your dog is NOT enough to effectively potty train your dog.
In order to effectively potty train your dog you need to take the same concept that crate training uses to teach the dog that a crate is his OWN space, and apply it to larger rooms of your house.
This is where the concept of Earning Room Rights comes into play.
When I say Earning Room Rights, I’m talking about a process of confining an un-potty trained dog to one small room, and helping him understand that that particular room is not to be eliminated in until he fully grasps that concept.
Once the dog has fully mastered the art of holding his bladder in this first room that room is now Pee Proof, then and only then do we slowly give the dog the opportunities to earn the rights to additional rooms.
Thus the name, Earning Room Rights 
3 Tips To Pee Proofing A Room
Most of my clients who struggle potty training their dogs are making one of these 3 Pee Proofing mistakes.
Mistake #1: Focusing on more then one room, or one space at a time
Never forget that potty training dogs is done one room at a time.
Start teaching your dog how to be potty trained by picking one room of your home and confining your dog to that space with gates. I personally like to pick a heavily trafficked room that has a door leading outside
Pee Odors Are Harder To Remove From Carpet. Start potty training in rooms with harder surfaces.
To some dogs carpet is a bulls-eye just waiting to be shot at. So to help make your potty training job easier, just avoid carpet altogether if you can.
Mistake #2: Failure to do Temptation Testing
If your dog seems to be holding his bladder in his one isolated room for hours at a time, even when you leave him unsupervised, don’t think your work is done.
As I mentioned before, many dogs have certain surfaces that they prefer to pee on, or certain objects like stuffed animals.
When I was potty training my Golden Retriever, Bauer, he would behave perfectly on linoleum, but had a hard time resisting the urge to go on the carpet.
So I felt that before Bauer had earned the right to have access to carpeted rooms, he needed to undergo some carpet Tempatation Testing.
Temptation Testing is simply taking the types of surfaces, or objects that your dog likes to pee on and puting them into the gated off room that you’ve been Pee Proofing.
Tempt your dog to pee on slabs of carpet before introducing to carpeted rooms
In the case of my Golden Retriever, I noticed that if I left him unsupervised with a slab of carpet in his room, he would pee on it.
Knowing he couldn’t pass this Temptation Test saved me lots of messy clean ups, because if my dog couldn’t resist the urge to pee on one single slab of carpet in an entirely linoleum covered room, then he hadn’t Earned The Rights to carpeted rooms.
If your dog has the same kind of problem, this is the point where you want to train him that if he has to go, there is an EASIER and more rewarding way to go to the bathroom INSTEAD of peeing on the carpet.
This is the point that I like to teach people the “Jingle Bell” technique, which is a technique for teaching your dog to TELL you when he needs to go potty, and earning rewards for doing so.
If you’d like to learn more about the Jingle Bell technique, along with dozens of other potty training strategies, you can find them inside my “Hands Off” dog training course here:
In short, just make sure your dog can pass the Tempations to pee on different objects before you expose him to a new room.
Mistake #3: Only give Partial access to new rooms
Allow dogs to lay on small sections of carpet before giving full access to new room
This technique is pretty straightforward, but ignored by many.
Too many people get their dog’s to stop pissing in one room, and then start thinking their dog is completely potty trained and ready for the whole house.
That ‘aint necissarily so 
When you’ve successfully Pee Proofed the first room of your home, and your dog is passing his Temptation Tests don’t just give complete access to a 2nd room of your home.
This new room, hasn’t been lived in by your dog, and is not yet considered his.
In the case of my own dog, when he’d earn the right to gain access to a second room in our home, instead of opening up the entire room to him, I adjusted the baby gates that had previously locked him in our kitchen with , so that they allowed Bauer enough space to come lay down in the second room, but nothing more.
This meant I only allowed him to walk two or three additonal feet into this second room.
This process allows him to be further tempted by the carpeted surface I was letting him onto, as well as slowly spread his scent into that room and start to think of it as his own as well.
As I noticed him continuing to do well, I would slowly open up more and more of the room to him. By the time he had access to the whole room, he’d already filled the room with his scent and taken ownership of it.
If you’ll follow this process, you’ll notice that each additional room your dog earns the right to live in becomes easier and easier to Pee Proof. Just try to resist the urge to give your dog access to the whole house and you’ll find potty training a MUCH simpler process.
Additional Potty Training Tips & Recommended Reading:
If you would like to listen to learn additional tips for how to quickly potty train your dog, you should listen to the Potty Training Interview I did with expert dog trainer, Amanda Brothers.
You’ll receive a free copy of this interview when you order a copy of my Hands Off Dog Training course here:
Great article! So much information on what is such an important topic! I recently bought a dog crate to crate train my 3 year old dog who was tearing my blinds down when I left home for work during the day. He was getting so frantic that he would try and jump out the windows and in the process pull all of my expensive blinds down! It took a while but I can honestly say that buying a crate and teaching my dog to use it was the best investment I ever made. Now everyday when i come home from work he is well behaved and waiting for me in his crate. I found heaps of good crate training information at http://petdogcrates.com — hopefully this info can help some others. Thanks again for the great article!
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@ November 5th, 2009 at 18:11dear sir
i liked the way you train the dogs i have seen the video it is very grate and nice
thanking you
shepherd
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@ January 13th, 2010 at 02:36We have three older dogs. They are very spoiled and set in their ways. I have been the latest edition to this family. I want to know if there is a way to house break these dogs. One dog is approx. 10 yrs. old. He is blind and deaf. The next is 7 years. She’s the worst. She will sneak around and go in other rooms. The last is 5 years. She is the littlest and gets a lot of sympathy from her owner.
I am at my wits end. I am about to have new carpet laid in my home. Can you help me?
Sincerely, Paulette
s
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@ January 24th, 2010 at 12:15My husband & I recently (30 days) got 2 shelter dogs. They are small dogs of mixed breed, litter mates, female 2 yrs old. The maltese mix is perfectly housebroken. BUT her sister is not. We are tryng the clicker & treats when she goes outside to pee. Her name is Pepper & we will have 5-6 days when she doesn’t go in the house & then she goes inside. There is a doggie door but she simply goes outside to look around & doesn’t relate that to going to the bathroom outside. She also doesn’t like the grass. We are in Arizona and there is gravel in the yard so we take her to that,but I think her prefernce is the concrete patio. I call her my peepot, when we try and brag on her when she goes outside, it is like she doesn’t relate the action to what she did (therefore the clicker) How long can this take? Forever?
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@ February 13th, 2010 at 13:57