Potty Training Your Puppy, I Mean, Toddler

Tags

2 year old, baby, conditioning, house breaking, motherhood, parenting, positive reinforcement, potty, potty training, puppy, toddler

So, when potty training Owl, I’ve been working off of the basic tenets of puppy potty training. I’ve received tons of advice for potty training Owl and have incorporated some of it into my program, but it’s always easier to work off of what you already know.

And so, for anyone else who finds dogs easier than kids, I present:

Potty Training Your Puppy Toddler

substitute dog with child and grass with potty

Step 1: Allow your  puppy toddler to roam around the house, while you watch carefully.

Step 2: Take your puppy toddler to the appropriate location on a regular basis, most notably whenever he/she wakes up, has played for 10-15 minutes, or has eaten.

Step 3: If your puppy toddler urinates or has a bowel movement in the correct place, make a big deal out of it. Have special, very high value treats that you dispense only when your puppy toddler has voided in the correct location.

Step 4: If your puppy toddler begins to urinate or have a bowel movement inside while playing, interrupt the behavior (by picking him/her up or simply saying “oops!” or clapping your hands to distract him/her) and immediately direct him/her to the correct location. Hopefully he/she will finish urinating or defecating there.

Do not punish mistakes; simply try to interrupt them. Potty training is about conditioning correct behaviors.

Step 5: If your puppy toddler manages to urinate or defecate in the correct place once redirected, throw a big party and dispense the usual treats, even though this started with a mistake. What your puppy toddler will remember is that urinating/defecating on the floor resulted in interruption, while urinating/defecating in the correct place was highly rewarded.

Further adjustments: Since puppies are naturally naked, it is easy to spot urination and bowel movements as they happen. For this to work with toddlers, they must be similarly unencumbered. A collar shirt is optional.

Further adjustments part the second: Toddlers seem to respond better to smarties and similar small sweets than they do to freeze dried liver or cut up hot dog, but this may vary from toddler to toddler.

Congratulations!

You have begun the process of potty training your puppy toddler! While you should see dramatic improvements within a few days, the process may take several weeks to months to complete. Consistency is key!

 

Potty Training: NO MORE EXCUSES

Tags

anxiety, biting the bullet, excuses, house breaking, parenting, potty training, puppies, toddler, trying new things

Since this is the long weekend, we have decided to take advantage of three days off to bite the bullet and try potty training.

I’ve spent the last few months reading The No Cry Potty Training Solution, and asking every single parent I know for advice.

My mother has no advice, since I was potty trained by my aunt. I asked her for advice before she died and she said she had just made a big fuss over me – apparently for weeks afterwards whenever I used the potty I would ask “Auntie Helen happy??”

Not Mary Poppins over at Daycare Daze lays out her Smartie method, which she has been using with great success for decades.

Hannah from Hodgepodge And Strawberries has also blogged about potty training, and vehemently expressed her distaste of pull-ups to me over Twitter.

@IfByYesTweets no worries. i have OPINIONS about potty training. i've trained, lemme see, five kids now. PullUps are bollocks.

— Hannah (@hpstrawberries) November 9, 2012

And we’ve spent the last couple of months getting Owl accustomed to sitting on the potty (both a small potty and a potty seat on our toilet) while reading stories.

Once, while running around with no diaper on, he started to pee so we sent him to the potty where he deliberately finished the pee to great acclaim, and he was so encouraged that he did it again a few minutes later.

Our excuses for not potty training him properly were wearing thin.

Ultimately, I was afraid of failure, and afraid of change. I have anxiety issues. Change scares me. Doing something I’ve never done before scares me.

Then I had an epiphany.

I was called to a man’s house to help him deal with his new puppy. He was red-eyed with sleeplessness, and shack-wacky for spending three consecutive days holding his puppy. Every time he put his puppy down the puppy would pee or poop, and he was so anxious over messing up his dog’s house training that he was driving himself insane.

Even though this is the best kind of owner – 100% dedicated to starting his puppy out right – he was thinking of returning the puppy for the sake of his own sanity.

So I stepped in and made him put the puppy down, and as I talked him through the process of interrupting the behavior, moving the puppy to the correct spot, and then rewarding things when done correctly I realized…

…I have TOO potty trained before.

And Beloved Dog was challenging to potty train.

If I could train Beloved Dog, if I knew the steps well enough to walk someone through it and be paid for doing so (he kept the puppy, who is doing much better, and signed on for six more sessions), then I could potty train a toddler.

So I went out and bought stickers and smarties, bristol board for a (very crude)  reward chart, and training pants.

Let’s DO THIS THING.