Q&A with ‘The Paw Man’ (768) – Positive About Toilet Training Denise Chupp I have had dogs all my life, but in 2009 I got 2 Jack Russell Terriers, I have never been able to housebreak them and my older dogs also started using the inside to potty. Now I have a giant mess seeing as I have 7 dogs. HELP ??? Paw Man Denise: What methodology have you used to toilet train the other dogs? What sort of trainer are you? (Positive-only or Balanced) What percentage of the dogs time is spent outside the house? Denise Chupp Ive tried crate, taking them outside every few minutes as puppies and it has always worked before. Paw Man So essentially you have been relying on the rewards that you give the dogs for toileting outside to displace the toileting inside? This is the slowest and most inefficient way to toilet train a dog. It takes a long time to work and is very unreliable because it fails to address the critical aspect of toilet training which is ‘not toileting inside the house’. Teaching a dog that toileting outside the house is a rewarded behavior does not address any consequences for toileting inside the house. Denise I am a positive and balanced trainer. Paw Man You can’t be both, you can only be one or the other. If your training is 99% positive but you use the occasional aversive then you are by definition a ‘balanced trainer’. ALL balanced trainers use predominantly positive motivation and only occasionally use aversives…. That is the correct ‘balance’. Don’t believe the propaganda put out by the posi-nazis that ‘balanced trainers’ use ‘only’ aversives. In fact the posi-nazis don’t even like to admit that balanced trainers use most of the techniques that positive-only trainers use…. They just use these techniques AS WELL as aversives with a typical ‘praise to aversive ratio’ of 95/5 during training. Many of the more fanatical and out of touch posi-nazis even refer to ‘balanced training’ as ‘punishment based’. That’s like me referring to positive-only training as obesity based training. :) Denise The dogs are outside about 25% of the day. They will usually play outside and come inside to potty no matter how long I leave them outside. Paw Man Then your solution is quite easy. Just reverse the process……. Leave them outside UNTIL you see one of the dogs toilet outside and then bring ONLY that dog inside and make sure that you visually supervise that dog. You may need two people here so that you can both supervise the dog(s) inside as well as continue to observe the dogs outside…… as toileting outside is the only way that the dogs gain access to the inside of the house. During visual supervision of dogs inside the house, if you do catch a dog in the act of toileting then that dog must receive an immediate aversive and be placed straight back outside. It’s important to remember that a dog being inside a house with us is not a right, but a privilege. To achieve that privilege the dog must follow certain rules such as not being destructive to anything inside the house and of course not toileting inside the house. If you allow the dogs to remain inside the house when they break these rules then you are failing to enforce the rules, boundaries and limitations that dogs need to achieve consistency and happiness in their (and our) lives.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 22:21:16 +0000
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