Great Potty Training Tips Stop an Adult Dog’s Accidents

Beau is a four-year-old Shih Tzu who used to live with Eva in Omaha. Eva now lives with her guardian’s mother, but was there when we arrived for a dog behavior training session to teach put a stop to Beau’s accidents in the house or marking.

Beau met me at the door first, joined shortly after by Eva. While they were excited to see me, I was surprised that one common dog behavior problem was missing. Check out the video below to find out what was missing.

Because Eva now lives with the guardian’s mother, we focused on Beau for this session.

The first thing we discussed was the dog’s accidents in the house. I inquired as to how the dog was originally potty trained. Because it was several years ago, the guardian struggled a bit to give me all the details, but it sounded like a few steps may have been missed.

I didn’t shoot a video for this part of the session. But since this was an important dog behavior problem the guardians wanted to fix, I decided to share a video I shot with a client in the Pacific Palisades that includes potty training tips and remedial potty training instructions.

By consistently linking the new command word with the act of going potty, and linking the word to the reward stage, it shouldn’t take long to get Beau to stop having accidents in the house.

Beau lives in a home with a young child. While having a dog can be a very enriching element in a child’s life, some children’s efforts to play or interact with the dog end up causing some unwanted dog problems.

As a dog behavior expert, Im always trying to come up with ways to improve the relationship between humans and dogs. A few years ago I came up with a way to use one of the most impactful parts of positive dog training to get children to help train and reward a dog for good behavior. I share this free dog training tip in the video below.

This is a real tricky down effect. The more the child practices positive interactions with the dog, the better the dog gets at them. And the more the child practices with the dog, the more reward the child gets. Everyone wins!

By the end of the session, Beau was following the new rules we introduced, the humans were communicating better and getting immediate responses from both dogs. It will take some practice at the exercises and techniques we introduced in the session, but if Beau’s guardians stick to it, they should start seeing improving behavior that only gets better.