Tips to Help a Los Angeles Pug Stop Having Accidents in the House

For this Los Angeles puppy training session we worked with black lab mix Gummy (left) and a 7 month-old Pug named Mika who has accidents in the house and likes to jump up on people.

Mika was excited when I first arrived, but after using a few dog behaviorist tricks (and a little patience), he settled down. I refrained from petting or giving him attention during this excited period as doing so would have rewarded or enhanced that behavior.

Once he was completely calm, the family let Gummy in from the back yard. Aside from not showing much respect for personal space and pawing for attention, Gummy behaved pretty well.

I started things off by asking about the dog’s daily routine. I wanted to see what kind of structure was in place as well as how much exercise the dogs got. Proper exercise is crucial when you have a higher energy dog or puppy.

Because the dogs were not well behaved on the leash, they weren’t getting walked as often as they should. Later in the session I showed the guardians how to use a Martingale collar along with a special twist to stop them from pulling on the leash.

I also suggested that they incorporate the fetch into daily exercise as its a very efficient way to burn off excess energy in dogs. To track their progress and come up with the right combination of exercise, I recommended the guardians start keeping a daily exercise journal listing the number of fetches, duration of walk, etc. Then at the end of each day, they can grade that dog’s behavior with an A-F grade. By playing with the length and repetitions of the various exercises, they can find a cocktail that sufficiently burns off the right amount of energy so they dogs are calm and the behavior improves.

One of the most pressing dog behavior issues was Mika’s habit of having accidents in the house. When I found out they didn’t even have a command word for potty in place, I knew we needed to go over some remedial potty training. You cant ask a dog if it needs to potty if you haven’t established a vocabulary first. You can get several free potty training tips in the video below.

By assigning a command word and using it when the dog starts to pee or poop (within 3 seconds of starting), and rewarding the dog within 3 seconds of finishing while saying the word again, they will give Mika an incentive to only go outside. Many think potty training secrets are hard. They are not. Successful potty training is all about observation, consistent rewarding and connecting the word to the act.

If the guardians spend a week taking the dog out and watching it until it goes, every potty break for a week, they should be able to stop a dog from having accidents in the house.

We covered quite a few other things in this 4 hour in home dog training session so I shot a roadmap to success video. You can check out the summary of all the positive dog training tips I shared with their guardians in this session by watching the video below.