Step one:
Establish a toilet spot as close to the exit of your home as you can.
Many small dogs have ‘wet foot fear’, and they are reluctant to step off your deck or pavers onto wet grass.
So, the toilet spot should be ‘just at the edge of your deck or pavers’ so your dog doesn’t have to walk across wet grass.
A garden bed is ideal. The substrate (surface) of the toilet spot should be a fine much like sugar cane mulch as not only will this absorb urine, but it is more likely to be dry enough to be ‘wet foot compatible’.
This area should be about the size of a ‘coffee table’.
Step two:
Dogs tend to soil where they have soiled before.
Therefore, it’s important that this new toilet area smells ‘a bit’ like a dog’s toilet.
So, collect your dog’s deposits from elsewhere (particularly if they are indoors) and place them into the toilet spot.
- For urine, hose the liquid into the mulch with a small amount of water.
- For faeces, remove after 24 hours
Step three:
Because dogs tend to soil where they have soiled before, you also need to clean up indoors so that it doesn’t smell like a dog’s toilet.
Use an enzymatic agent and we usually recommend the readily-available laundry detergent ‘Bio Attack’ – make it up in warm water.
Step four:
This is when you implement the ‘Alarming Technique’.
Set an alarm so that it rings every hour.
When the alarm rings, have a look around your home and see if your dog has gone to the toilet in the last hour.
If your dog hasn’t, you know that your dog has at least an hour’s worth of ‘matter’ in its bowel or bladder.
Next, you need to take your dog to the designated toilet space in a joyful manner.
We use the “DO WEE’ voice – “Come on Rover. Do Wee. Do Wee!”
Get your dog animated about the journey to the toilet spot. This is especially important if you are in a two-storey home and the journey is like going down Mt Everest to the toilet at the Base Camp!
This step is quite important as your dog needs to practice the journey to the toilet spot – don’t just pick up your dog and plonk it down in the yard, as your dog will have no knowledge of how to physically get to the spot.
Encourage your dog to follow you through the house, out the door and down the steps.
Usher your dog close to the toilet spot you created and keep saying ‘DO WEE’.
- As soon as your dog produces urine or faeces, say YES GOOD BOY
- Use voice only, not food
- This reward is the GOAL
- All your work is to reward the production of faeces or urine OUTDOORS
If your dog doesn’t go to the toilet within 5 minutes, that doesn’t matter.
Return indoors and reset the alarm to ring in another hour.
When alarm next rings there will be two hours of product which is more likely to be produced when you give the opportunity.
- If your dog doesn’t go to the toilet within 5 minutes, that doesn’t matter.
- Return indoors and reset the alarm to ring in another hour.
- When alarm next rings there will be three hours of product which is more likely to be produced when you give the opportunity.
- If your dog doesn’t go to the toilet within 5 minutes, that doesn’t matter.
- Return indoors and reset the alarm to ring in another hour.
- When alarm next rings there will be four hours of product which is more likely to be produced when you give the opportunity.
NO DOG will go past four hours without soiling if given the opportunity, but most dogs can go longer than 4 hours.