Puppy potty training is always first on the agenda for my clients with a new puppy. Puppy potty training is almost always the one thing new puppy owners also have the hardest time with because of pitfalls they don't realize.

One pitfall new puppy owners can't seem to understand is that the more unsupervised free time in your home the puppy is allowed to have, you are setting the puppy up to have failure after failure in learning to be potty trained.

Until puppies get to be closer to 5-6 months of age, there is not a strong connection between the brain and the bowels and bladder. They feel the urge to go, they squat and go. To achieve successful puppy potty training you must be proactive instead of reactive with their training.

Another pitfall is that puppy owners expect more from their puppy than is age appropriate for the puppy. What you can expect from an 8 week old puppy is very different than what you can expect from a 16 week old puppy. Again, don't set your puppy up to fail by having expectations the puppy can't possibly meet.

Yet another pitfall in puppy potty training is the impact of WHAT and HOW you feed your puppy. Not only does this affect potty training, BUT it has a big impact on puppy behavior also. Unless you are feeding your puppy a high quality dog/puppy food, you are loading your puppy up with low quality protein such as "animal by-product" and tons of cheap carbohydrates. You CAN NOT find high quality dog food in a supermarket or even those big box stores (except for a very few brands)

What happens with an overload of cheap carbohydrates? An overabundance of serotonin occurs in the brain and causes more energy than the puppy knows what to do with so you get wild behavior. You must understand what to look for in the ingredients in your puppy's food and in what order those ingredients need to be.

How you feed your puppy can impact puppy potty training. It is important to understand that feeding only dry food to your puppy makes it difficult or impossible to gauge when the puppy will need to potty because dry food breaks down very very slowly in their intestines. It is important for optimal nutrition and more "regularity" in potty training to feed your puppy in a way that allows the food to digest evenly.

Avoiding these pitfalls is not difficult. It's just information that most new puppy owners don't know. I have a great free article on 5 Critical Steps in Potty Training Your Puppy at:

http://www.puppytrainingsecretsrevealed.com/tips.html

I think you'll find it very useful.

Be as comfortable with the trainer of your dog, as you are the teacher of your children. And remember: "Opportunity Barks!"

Jim Burwell