Paper Training Small Dogs, Good Intentions, Bad Results

Posted on Nov 22 in Training A Small Dogby Jeff K.Print

Reader Carole wrote to me that she has three small dogs that urinate wherever they feel like it inside her home. She said she paper trained her dogs. In her email to me, she wrote:

“They are 90 percent  paper trained but will do it [urinate] other places [in the house] too.”

Here’s the problem with paper training. It teaches a small dog that its okay to pee inside your home. You may say, well sure, but if the dog hits the paper target, it’s okay to pee inside the home. The problem is, almost all small dogs have a very hard time telling the difference between peeing on paper and peeing on other surfaces in the home. Carole’s dogs clearly prove the point.

Some dog trainers advocate teaching a puppy to reliably pee on paper and then move the paper outdoors. The idea is, once you get a puppy to hit a target, you can move the target outside and the puppy will translate this into peeing outside. It doesn’t work because the puppy’s first and most lasting lesson about peeing says: “Pee inside the house.”

Please, if you are attempting to house train a new dog, skip paper training. For most dogs, paper training causes more problems than it solves.

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