How To Housetrain an Adult Pug Dog
No commentsDid you know that training an adult Pug is actually a shared effort between you, your family and the Pug? You might think that a full grown Pug who may have even been potty trained in the past can just as easily adjust to being in your home. This is not the case. It takes time and commitment for a Pug to get used to the way your home is run and to learn your home’s elimination schedule.
These types of high expectations for your new Pug are just unrealistic. A Pug needs to be able to make adjustments to its environment and understand that you will not tolerate peeing on the carpet. This is especially true if its previous owner did not seem to mind that sort of behavior.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because he’s an adult Pug that he’ll just “know” what to do. Start with him as if he were a puppy and gradually teach him the routine of your home’s pet potty schedule.
Beginning with a crate or closing the Pug off to just using the potty in the bathroom can help a lot. After that has been established you can begin creating a schedule for potty breaks outdoors. Most adult Pugs are picky about where they use the bathroom at. Many do not want to go where they sleep, eat or play.
Take your Pug outside in your yard and choose a spot for your Pug to go potty. The key is to bring the Pug back to that same exact spot on each visit outdoors so that he knows that is where he needs to go. Monitoring your Pug’s elimination patterns can help you devise the right schedule for potty breaks as well.
You also have to set morning and evening feeding times. He may not have had such an organized life schedule, so this could take time for adjustment. Don’t believe that old saying, ‘you can’t teach an old Pug new tricks.” It’s not the age of the Pug that matters - it’s the consistency of the owner.
If your Pug came from an abusive home, even if is was just filled with shouting and hitting with paper for any accidents, then your training efforts may take longer. First you have to win the Pug’s confidence and understand that he needs time to get comfortable in his new home.
There will be accidents, so be prepared to clean it up and move forward. Don’t assume that an adult Pug will be any easier to train than a puppy. Both Pugs would face the same adjustment issues. You have to train with consistency and affection so that you reinforce the responses that you want repeated.
An older male Pug may be accustomed to marking his territory by urinating on it. This is an instinctive behavior for male Pugs - you aren’t going to break him of it without breaking his spirit or having him neutered.
Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 10:08 am and is filed under Pug. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
