When you have to leave home for several hours and your puppy needs to stay in a crate during the day, remember to plan ahead. If you’re unsure about how long your puppy can hold it, use the month-plus-one rule. Take the age of your puppy in months and add one, and that is the maximum number of hours that your puppy should be able to comfortably hold it between potty breaks. A 3-month-old puppy plus one equals 4 hours that they should be able to stay in the crate without a mess.
Many owners have great results by also placing a bell on the door handle, and training their puppy to ring the bell when they need to go out. Start by ringing the bell as you exit with your dog, and praise the puppy as soon as they learn to ring the bell on their own.
While you’re adhering to your timeline, it helps to firmly establish the rules for where your puppy should and should not eliminate, and dog crates and puppy pads can be very useful training tools to assist you in establishing your potty training plan.
Each day begins the same for you and your puppy. When the alarm clock goes off, wake up and get your puppy out of the crate and outside to do their business. Don’t stop to make coffee, check emails, or brush your teeth.
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When Is A Puppy Potty Trained?
As I mentioned earlier, I think this is a somewhat subjective question.
Why is it a subjective question? Because we often don’t know exactly when our puppy is 100% (or at least 99.99%) potty trained.
Here are a few questions you might ask yourself when deciding if your puppy is potty trained:
The thing is you’ll probably start to notice your puppy understands she’s supposed to go potty outside very early, probably within the first week or so.
However, getting her to understand that she’s supposed to potty outside, and getting her out to her potty spot is your responsibility.
My definition of a potty trained puppy is:
Now, this definition does not eliminate all potty accidents. The only potty accidents that happen are because I didn’t get to the back door in time to let my puppy outside to her potty spot.
Elsa is 6 months old and potty trained (by my definition). A couple of weeks ago she was waiting at the backdoor to go outside, but I didn’t let her out because the back gate was open, I didn’t have her leash and I didn’t want to let her out into the yard without a leash with the back gate open.
I went into the backyard to close the back gate and by the time I got back (probably about 60 seconds) to the house, Elsa went to another room and pee’d on the floor.
This was not Elsa’s fault and I still consider her potty trained even though she recently had an accident in the house.
I don’t teach my dogs to ring bells to be let outside otherwise I might add that to my criteria.
Stetson used to go to the backdoor and if I didn’t notice he’d come to find me, poke me with his nose, then walk back to the backdoor. It was something I didn’t teach him, but he learned on his own and it was very effective.
One last thing I want to say about when a puppy is potty trained. While your puppy may be potty trained and perfect in your own home that may not be the case everywhere your puppy goes.
If you leave your puppy with a friend, your pup may not know where she is supposed to potty in her new environment.
You should keep in mind and advise any novice puppy sitters that your puppy may need some help learning where to go potty.
It’s usually a quick process, but it could save future puppy sitters from a stain or two on their new carpet.
How long does it take to potty train a puppy is one of the most common questions we get on the blog, but as I said earlier, it feels like we are a blog about pee and poop.
So here are several related pee and poop questions we decided to answer today:
FUR-malize a Plan and Stick with It!
Whether you bell or door train, you need to make a decision and stick with it. In basic door training, you simply take your dog out the same door to eliminate. In contrast, bell training starts a little differently. Bell training requires you to:
If you do your part, your puppy will conquer the house-training hurdle. Remember, puppies are . . . well, puppies. Young dogs require a lot of patience, kindness, and consistency.
On top of all the potty training, your puppy may also be missing her mother and littermates. Consider adding a Mothers Heartbeat Puppy Bone Pillow to your puppys bed or crate. The pillow mimics the sound of a mother dogs heartbeat and can help to reduce anxiety or stress your pup may experience.
If you get discouraged, simply look at your puppys sweet face and remember training is all new to her too. Together you can grow and learn new things. So, take a deep breath and grab the leash. You can do this!
1. Hoffman, Heather. “How to Potty Train A Puppy or Adult Dog.” 30 June 2020, Pets.Webmd.com, https://www.petmd.com/dog/training/evr_dg_how-to-potty-train-your-dog
2. WebMD. “House Training Your Puppy.”Pets.Webmd.com, https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/house-training-your-puppy#2
3. Day, Laura. “Bell Training Puppy Techniques: Dos and Donts”Pupbox.com, 8 April 2019, https://pupbox.com/training/bell-training-puppy/
Puppy Potty Training Problems: How long to housetrain?
It typically takes 4-6 months for a puppy to be fully house trained, but some puppies may take up to a year. Size can be a predictor. For instance, smaller breeds have smaller bladders and higher metabolisms and require more frequent trips outside.