Paper Training Puppies - Pros And Cons

Paper Training Your Dog - How To Do It - Common Problems

What’s paper training? Paper training is a specific form of house training for your dog: you’re teaching her where in the house is appropriate for her to eliminate (pee or poop). When you paper train your dog, you teach her to only go on newspapers (chosen for their absorbency, ready availability, and cheap cost) which you gather up and throw away after each use.




You can choose to use paper training as an intermediary step for eventually only going outside (although not everyone recommends this: it’s easier on the dog, and more effective all round, to choose one method and stick with it.)




When Paper Training Is The Best Option For Everyone Involved


- When you don’t have easy access to a yard (for example, you live in a hi-rise apartment block)

- It’s not easy for you to take your dog outside for any other reason (for example, elderly or unwell people)

- You have a full-time job, or other time-consuming commitment which can’t be got around (meaning that you’re not able to spend the large amounts of time supervising your dog that crate training requires)

- You’re planning on training your dog to go outside the house eventually, but not just yet (for example, it’s the dead of winter with four-foot snow drifts outside)



Paper training isn’t suitable for all dogs: it really only works for small males and small-to-medium females, since a dog larger than these just produces too much waste for the newspaper (and you!) to handle.




How do you paper train your dog? First, pick a convenient area of the house for your dog to use as the elimination area. Because she’s going to be peeing and pooping in this area, it’s best if you can choose somewhere without carpet: most people choose a corner of the kitchen or laundry (since these rooms usually have tiled or linoleum floors, making hygiene a non-issue.)




Spread newspaper thickly in a corner of this room. At first, you’ll need to make the newspaper area pretty big, since your pup has no idea that she’s meant to go on the paper at all. To make sure that she’s able to go only on the paper, you’ll either need to restrict her movements to the papered area of the floor (which you can do by erecting barriers to keep her in – if the room you’ve chosen is large or busy, this is probably the most user-friendly option for you), or paper the whole floor (which is a viable option if the paper-room is small and there’s not much thoroughfare.)




At first, your puppy will go pretty much at random on the paper. It’s important for the paper-training process that she only gets to go on the paper – you need her to form a strong association between the feeling of paper under her toes, and relieving herself.




After a week or two, you can begin to shrink the papered area of the floor, allowing her more access to unpapered surfaces (leave the barriers where they are for now so she doesn’t get the chance to eliminate anywhere else.) Do this gradually, a couple of sheets at a time. If you’ve given her enough time to get used to the paper, she should naturally restrict her elimination areas as the papered area shrinks.




NOTE: If at any time she begins to go off the paper, then increase the size of the papered floor surface to the size it was when she was still eliminating only on the paper, and give her more time to get used to it before beginning to reduce the papered area again. There’s no need to panic: this doesn’t mean that the paper training isn’t working, it just means you’re moving a bit too fast for your puppy’s capabilities.




Most dogs take a couple of months (eight to twelve weeks) to get used to the paper training method. Until she’s reliably going on the papers only, you should restrict her access to the rest of the house unless you’re actively supervising her- which means 100% of your attention is focused on the pup. In general, a good rule of thumb is that your puppy is confined to the papered area unless she’s sleeping, eating, or being played with/actively supervised.




You will still have to closely watch your puppy, and be ready to praise for a good job, and interupt an accident as it happens! I hope this information on paper training helps you in your decision as what method to use on your dog.




For more information on how to successfully house train your dog.

Do You Want More? Click Here For The Ultimate House Training Guide.


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