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Housebreaking Your Dog Through Location Training
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How to Proceed as You Location Train Your Dog -- Continued
Fading Out the Reinforcement
When you respond to your dog's elimination by presenting him with things he likes, like food and a rubdown, and the opportunity to be released from the toileting area, you are, essentially, providing the animal with positive reinforcement for having done his business in that location.
That is an essential realization, because research has revealed that a response is more likely to continue after the reinforcers that supported that response are removed, if those reinforcers are taken away gradually. For more on that topic, be sure to read the article on stretching the ratio.
What that means for location training your dog is this. During the training process, your dog will want to begin using the Pet Waste Station, or the assigned corner of the yard, because you will make it rewarding for him to do that. However, to ensure that your dog will continue to use the facility after you are no longer available to stand there and cheer him on, you should, over time, gradually make less and less of a fuss over his new found toileting skills, until finally you get to the point where you are just standing there watching. By that time, he should be well into the habit of doing it in the right spot, every time, all on his own.
How to Proceed If Your Dog Succeeds in Eliminating in a Forbidden Location
You may have noticed that up to this point, there has been no mention of how to deal with you dog after he eliminates some place where he shouldn't.
If your dog succeeds in relieving himself in a forbidden location, that is your fault, because you should have been there to see him when he was about to do it. You should have interrupted him and moved him along to the designated locale.
If you arrive on the scene within ten seconds or so of the time that your dog eliminates in a forbidden location, it is still a good idea for you to rush toward him as you repeat the word no in a tone of voice that he is sure to find upsetting. However, beyond that, there is no more to be done.
If you arrive on the scene much more than ten seconds after the fact, then, there is no sense in punishing your dog at that point.
If that happens to you, you should just resolve to, thereafter, to be more vigilant, so the next time around, you can interrupt and relocate the animal in a more timely fashion, before you have a messy cleanup to deal with.
However, at the same time, you should be aware that every time your dog eliminates in a forbidden location, it is a step in the wrong direction that sets back the training process and delays the coming of the day when your dog will be location trained with one hundred percent reliability.
How to Clean Up Properly If Your Dog Makes a Mess
Being creatures of habit, your dog is prone to return to urinate and defecate in the same area, over and over. That phenomena can work very much for you, because as a result, once you are able to get your dog to begin using the designated location, his natural inclination will fuel his desire to continue using that area.
It is important to note, however, that it is not just a dog's memory, but also his highly developed sense of smell that draws him back to do his business repeatedly in the same location. Your dog has a strong inclination, then, to eliminate in the future, in those locations where his keen sense of smell tells him he has eliminated in the past.
For that reason, to clean up properly after your dog eliminates in a forbidden location, you will need a product that not only returns your property to an acceptable state of cleanliness, but one that will also remove all vestiges of odor so thoroughly that even your dog's super olfactory organs will no longer be able to detect any trace of what was once there.
To accomplish that it is best to use an enzymatic cleaner that breaks down all traces of your dog's waste at a microscopic level. Un-Duz-It and Nature's Miracle Stain & Odor Remover are a couple prime examples that can be purchased online or in most pet stores. Your vet should be able to recommend others.
Whatever you do, do not use an ammonia based product to clean up after your dog, since vestiges of that odor can actually attract the animal back to that location again in the future, which would most certainly be moving you in the wrong direction.