Finally: Once your adoptee is consistently houseclean under your supervision, slowly add privileges. Take baby steps, and add more freedoms based upon perfect house manners. If the dog has a slipup when you are not looking, do not punish the dog. Clean up the mess (use an enzyme based cleaner), and then return to the last point in training where your dog was being 100% house clean. Continue building skills from that point. Keep adding freedoms until your dog understands that it is not OK to soil in the house. This re-fresher may sound like it takes a long time, but progress is usually quick once a dog gets the idea of what you want.

Sigrid Mirabella: canine behavior advisor and trainer.

Back to Articles and Stories