Teaching a Pair of Dogs to Potty in One Place

For this LA dog training session, we worked with 3 year-old Chocolate Lab Husky mix Chili (left) and her roomie, 3 year-old Mastiff / Coonhound / Australian Shepherd mix Bowie, teaching the dogs to potty in a specific location in the back yard.

The family has a young child and small back yard so the dogs repeatedly urinating in the grass is killing the yard. This is the first time someone has asked me to train the dogs to NOT go to the bathroom on the grass. Usually people are asking me to teach their dog to potty on the grass instead of the deck, but the process is the same, albeit with an obvious reversal.

Training a dog to go potty in a specific place is all about practice and patience. I included a few tips to help speed up the process of teaching a dog to potty in one location, but you need to be really dedicated to it for 10-15 days or so. That’s the secret to getting a dog to potty where you want.

It shouldn’t take long to get the dogs to potty in a specific spot with this approach. They will need to spent a solid 10-20 or so days walking them outside and rewarding them as I detailed in the above free dog training video. This can be a challenge, but if they invest the time and use the tricks to getting a dog to potty in one place that I shared, these dogs should learn pretty quickly. They were very well behaved which means the humans have done a good job with them. I appreciate them letting me assist them in showing the dogs how to go to the bathroom in a specific spot.

I shared quite a few other tips in this in home LA dog training session. To help the guardians remember them all, we recorded a roadmap to success video that you can watch below.