An Easy Way to Train a Dog to Go Outside on Their Own

For this Omaha dog training session we worked with 2 year-old Havanese Millie, going over how train a dog to go outside on their own.

We did 3 in home dog training sessions with Miss Milly. In the first session we went over some fundamentals, the benefits of using marker words to speed up training, how celebrating desired behaviors increased confidence and some tips on potty training.

Milly is a little bit of a velcro dog. This is what we call dogs who are clingy or have some separation anxiety. These dogs usually did not practice being alone when they are a puppy. Showering your puppy with love and attention is a wonderful thing, but they also need to practice being alone.

If you dont do so when the dog is a puppy, you can end up with a dog who goes from 100% access to humans to zero. That’s the biggest range there is and it causes a lot of dogs to become anxious when left alone.

It’s important to recognize that being alone causes the dog to feel insecure. Many people don’t consider that and just look at their dog wont go outside by itself as annoying.

Well it can be frustrating at times, showing your dog that your first unhappy is one of the last things you want to do if you want to train a dog to go outside on their own. The dog senses your frustration and feels meeker as a result.

How to Train a Dog to Go Outside on Their Own

A much better approach is to create a situation where the dog does part of the activity you want so that it’s easier. If you add in giving the dog a small reward each time it completes that part of the overall exercise, you help the dog gain confidence and learn what you want them to do.

The same approach works if you’re trying to help a Velcro dog. My goal was to create a series of small exercises that led up to Millie going outside on her own. Getting the dog to want to venture out alone is key if your dog wont go outside by itself.

Breaking things down into small exercises helps make things easier for the dog and dog trainer. One of the things that is great about positive dog training is small successes build up to larger ones later on, like helping a dog wont go outside by itself.

The idea is to have the dog practice the first step over and over until they’re successful and comfortable at it. Once that’s the case, you add in the next step and then practice them sequential; step 1 then step 2, repeating them both until step two is aeasy as well. Then you go 1, 2, 3 and so on.

It’s easy to train a dog to go outside on their own if you go at the dog’s pace.

I wanted to make it easy for the Milly’s guardians to remember all the steps for this positive dog training exercise so I pulled out my camera so that they could film me going over how to help when a dog wont go outside by itself.

If you want to know how train a dog to go outside on their own, check out the free positive dog training video below.

This may seem overly simplistic, but some of the best positive dog training is set up that way. By making it easy, giving the dog a reward and taking away the thing the dog does not want to happen, Milly felt comfortable and was walking outside by herself and lingering there.

It’s going to be important for her guardian to practice this exercise to train a dog to go outside on their own a couple times a day in short, successful practice sessions. Achieving small successes, then stringing them together one by one is a wonderful way to train a dog to go outside on their own or any other task.

Once Milly starts learning that there are a lot of wonderful things outside, her confidence will grow. When this happens it will help her to be less of a Velcro dog. This is the way to remedy things when a dog wont go outside by itself.

Having Milly feel comfortable being outside on her own will also help with her potty training problems. Once she feels comfortable being alone, she’ll start spending more and more time outside. The more that she is in the right place when the need to go arrives, the more practice she’ll have at going potty outside.

While the potty stuff is nice, I think that the building of confidence she will get as her humans practice this tip on how train a dog to go outside on their own will be a big quality of life improvement for both human and dog. Milly your days of being a velcro dog are nearing an end.

Fortunately, temperate weather is just around the corner. Once that’s the case, I would like to see the guardians practicing this exercise to train a dog to go outside on their own 2 to 4 times a day – in short, 1 to 5 minute practice sessions.

There is a limited window of weather where they will want to leave the door open. The more practice Millie gets at going in or out the open door, the more comfortable and established the behavior will become. After a few weeks or open door access, Milly wont be concerned that the door is closing. But keeping that door open when she goes out will be important, at least for the first week or three.

The more time that Milly spends exploring the outside and getting rewarded (finding treats), the more comfortable she’ll be venturing out on her own. The more often she does that, the less of a Velcro dog she will be.

Hopefully by this time next year, Milly’s guardians are telling the story about how they learned to train a dog to go outside on their own instead of beinmg frustrated with having to go out with her each time she needs to do her business.