Top five housebreaking tips

Housebreaking your new dog may seem like a daunting task, but with a bit of insight into dog psychology and these proven tips, your new pet will learn quickly. If he’s an adult dog who was never fully housebroken (he has accidents daily, weekly or monthly), you’ll find it’s best to treat him like a brand-new unhousebroken puppy.

1. Select the site. Before your new dog enters your house, introduce him to the specific area of your yard you’ve already designated as his. He’ll soon
   associate it with bathroom breaks.

2. Visit it often. It’s best to take your new dog outside about every two hours as well as upon waking, after playing and feeding and before going to bed. In addition, be alert to signals like sniffing and circling that may indicate he has to go.

3. Use his crate. When you can’t be there, crate your dog. Your dog respects his new “den” and will avoid soiling it. If you purchase a crate large enough to accommodate his adult size, you can partition off part of the crate so he won’t go in a corner of it.

4. Correct him kindly. Accidents will happen. Remember that shouting, scolding and punishment serve no purpose and will only confuse your dog. Even if you catch him in mid-act, simply say “No!” and immediately take him outside.

5. Praise him. Lavish praise on your dog each time he goes outside in his assigned spot. Speak in an upbeat voice, smile and reward him with treats after he does his business.

The Scoop on Accidents
Here’s how to make short work of accident cleanup:

• Soak up urine with Bounty® paper towels and remove feces to a plastic bag.

• Treat the soiled area with a mild detergent solution.

• On carpeting, blot the stain—don’t scrub—and work from the outside toward the center.

• To neutralize odors, use a spray product that’s veterinarian-approved as safe to use around pets.

A new puppy needs lots of positive reinforcement during housebreaking.

Two Methods of Potty Training

Paper Training

Choose a small uncarpeted area such as a bathroom or kitchen and place your puppy’s bed there. Spread newspapers over the rest of the floor. Puppy will not want to soil his bed so he will use the papered area. Be sure to praise him when you see him using the paper. After about a week, using the paper should become a habit for your puppy and you can decrease the area covered with newspaper by just a few inches every few days until only an area the size of one newspaper is covered. If you find mistakes, do not correct him after the fact. He won’t make the connection and will not understand why you are punishing him. Just clean up the mistake and go back to papering a larger area. If you catch him going off the paper, give him a stern ‘no’ and place him back on the paper and then praise him when he finishes there. Leaving a small piece of used paper in between the top and bottom layers will give puppy enough of a scent to help him realize where he is supposed to go.

Occasionally a puppy will think of the small papered area as his den and will begin to potty in other areas of the house when given freedom. This problem can be solved by simply using the crate training method but taking the puppy to the paper instead of outside.

As with any training, patience and a sense of humor are imperative. Never harshly punish your puppy as this can only backfire in the long run. Punishment will cause him to fear you, and fear is the root of many behavior problems, including aggression.

Crate Training

Crate training can be an efficient and effective way to house train a dog. Dogs do not like to soil their resting/sleeping quarters if given adequate opportunity to eliminate elsewhere. Temporarily confining your dog to a small area strongly inhibits the tendency to urinate and defecate. However, there is still a far more important aspect of crate training.

If your dog does not eliminate while she is confined, then she will need to eliminate when she is released, i.e., she eliminates when you are present to reward and praise her.

Be sure to understand the difference between temporarily confining your dog to a crate and long term confinement when you are not home. The major purpose of confinement when your are not home is to restrict mistakes to a small protected area. The purpose of crate training is quite the opposite. Short term confinement to a crate is intended to inhibit your dog from eliminating when confined, so that she will want to eliminate when released from confinement and taken to an appropriate area. Crate training also helps teach your dog to have bladder and bowel control. Instead of going whenever she feels like it, she learns to hold it and go at convenient scheduled times.

Crate training should not be abused, otherwise the problem will get drastically worse. The crate is not intended as a place to lock up the dog and forget her for extended periods of time. If your dog soils her crate because you left her there too long, the house training process will be set back several weeks, if not months.

Your dog should only be confined to a crate when you are at home. Except at night, give your dog an opportunity to relieve herself every hour. Each time you let her out, put her on leash and immediately take her outside. Once outside, give her about three to five minutes to produce. If she does not eliminate within the allotted time period, simply return her to her crate. If she does perform, then immediately reward her with praise, food treats, affection, play, an extended walk and permission to run around and play in your house for a couple of hours. For young pups, after 45 minutes to an hour, take her to her toilet area again. Never give your dog free run of your home unless you know without a doubt that her bowels and bladder are empty.

During this crate training procedure, keep a diary of when your dog eliminates. If you have her on a regular feeding schedule, she should soon adopt a corresponding elimination schedule. Once you know what time of day she usually needs to eliminate, you can begin taking her out only at those times instead of every hour. After she has eliminated, she can have free, but supervised, run of your house. About one hour before she needs to eliminate (as calculated by your diary) put her in her crate. This will prevent her from going earlier than you had planned. With your consistency and abundance of rewards and praise for eliminating outside, she will become more reliable about holding it until you take her out. Then the amount of time you confine her before her scheduled outing can be reduced, then eliminated.

Mistakes and Accidents During Training

If you ever find an accident in the house, just clean it up. Do not punish your dog. All this means is that you have given her unsupervised access to your house too soon. Until she can be trusted, don't give her unsupervised free run of your house. If mistakes and accidents occur, it is best to go back to the crate training. You need to more accurately predict when your dog needs to eliminate and she needs more time to develop bladder and bowel control.

Common Parasites

Various worms and other organisms can live in dogs’ digestive tract. Roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms, coccidia, and giardia are just a few. Intestinal worms can have a detrimental effect on your dog’s ability to properly absorb and digest nutrients, and can cause diarrhea if they are present in sufficient numbers.

Bacterial Overgrowth

Bacteria are normally found in the intestinal tract of dogs. There are good species of bacteria, such as lactobacillus, and harmful bacteria, such as salmonella and certain strains of E. coli. Good bacteria are important because they help with digestion and provide nutrients for a healthy intestinal lining. Harmful bacteria may be introduced to the intestines by feeding contaminated or spoiled foods, or by eating bacterial contaminated objects from the environment. Many dogs have some harmful strains of bacteria present in the intestines but don’t become ill. However, during times of stress concurrent intestinal problems, harmful bacteria can reproduce to high levels, and can kill off or crowd out the beneficial bacteria. This condition is known as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO).

SIBO is more common in dogs than most realize. A study done in 1995 found that 41 of 80 dogs (51%), representing 23 different breeds, had SIBO in conjunction with chronic diarrhea.¹ Dogs with SIBO can have many different clinical signs associated with malabsorption such as weight loss, diarrhea, flatulence (gas), anorexia, coprophagy (eating stools), and an increased appetite. Diagnosing SIBO in dogs can be difficult because there is no easy test to determine the levels of harmful bacteria present in the intestines. Therefore, veterinarians must sometimes rule out all other causes of diarrhea before they can diagnosis SIBO as the cause of diarrhea and malabsorption.

Stress

Stress also can cause diarrhea. Anxiety causes the sympathetic nervous system to increase intestinal motion. When the intestines move food through too quickly, nutrients are not absorbed properly, resulting in diarrhea. Dogs that are under stress for long periods of time may develop chronic diarrhea and weight loss.

Diet

Even your dog’s diet can cause diarrhea. Changing from one diet to another can cause intestinal upset and diarrhea if not done gradually (changing over 4 to 7 days). Different brands of dog foods have different protein, fat, carbohydrate, and fiber sources, and the intestines need time to acclimate to a new diet.

Some higher-fat diets may cause problems for particular breeds or individual dogs. If your dog develops diarrhea while on a high-fat diet, feeding a lower-fat diet may help resolve the problem.

Conclusion

Diarrhea is not a disease itself, but a clinical sign reflecting that the intestines are not working properly. It is important to consult with your veterinarian to determine the reason your dog has diarrhea and begin proper treatment. Diet can help promote intestinal health, however medication may be needed to resolve the underlying problem.

ATTENTION NEW STRAIN OF PARVO (PARVO F STRAIN)

Parvo Evolution

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, like almost every virus, Parvo is constantly evolving. During the Spring of 2007, for example, a new, more virulent strain appeared, and really made its presence felt in places such as Texas, Georgia and California. In some states, puppies were being put down in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus.

This has become known as the F-Strain Parvo Virus, and may be the seventh mutation to appear since it was first recognized in 1978. It appears to have crossed the Atlantic from Europe to North America, and is suspected to be airborne.

This strain is more deadly than the other strains of Parvo and needs to be treated more aggressively. Dogs contracting this new strain will have accelerated symptoms, and infected dogs usually die of dehydration and shock because it typically attacks the intestines causing severe, bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Making matters worse, it prevents the absorption of nutrients and fluids. As a further complication, it can also attack a dog's heart causing congestive heart failure. This complication can occur months or years after an apparent recovery from the intestinal form of the disease.

As we stress throughout this site, time is of the essence when dealing with Parvo, but this is even more true with the F-Strain: from the time that symptoms first appear to the time of death can be as little as six hours!

You therefore need to start treating the virus immediately, and that includes providing your sick doggie with fluids and electrolytes to offset what he is losing.

The F-Strain symptoms you should look out for are:

• gelatin-like stools, with some blood
• vomiting, with bile and foam
• rapid weight loss, within a few hours of becoming ill
• a rise in temperature, as high as 107 degrees, although this symptom is not always present
• not drinking, and probably not eating either
• acting normal and playing, but resting more often, but then becoming lethargic and laying around, as the dehydration continues.

At this point, the dog will die in less than 24 hours unless it is detected in the first stage (i.e. not drinking and with a low grade temperature).

What this means is that the traditional treatments that you may find at the vet's are becoming less and less effective.