Sidebar: Potty Training My Puppy with Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Ideally, I should have interrupted my puppy every time he was about to eliminate illegally. In practice, I caught Miat pooping or peeing illegally many times hours after the fact. To avoid wasting these potential learning experiences, I carried Miat to the misdeed followed by a 5 or 10 minute timeout in the bathroom tub. I daresay these lessons were helpful in Miat's potty training.

Positive Reinforcement

I wanted to use positive reinforcement as the main tool in potty training my puppy. I set out to watch Miat closely, especially after eating and drinking. If he seemed to want to potty (e.g., sniffing or circling), I would put him on his training pad, and gently say "pee pee pooh pooh" in a "happy" voice and reward him with a doggy treat if Miat went. If I caught my puppy in the act while not on the training pad, I would interrupt him with a firm, but gentle, "no no no"; and again place Miat on his training pad and reward him if finished his business.

Catch 22

Unfortunately, in practice, it was very difficult to watch Miat continuously even when he was confined in the same room. (Imagine the tension and stress from being on an indefinite DEFCON 1 state of alert.) Frustratingly, the briefest inattention often resulted in a disheartening pee puddle or poop pile. During further observation, I noticed that my puppy had a natural inclination to potty (especially poop) only in privacy. This behavior had the unhappy effect of encouraging Miat to wait and potty only if he wasn't being watched. In other words, I faced a catch 22. To potty train Miat with positive reinforcement, I had to watch him carefully to see when he wanted to go. However, the more I watched my puppy, the less likely he was to go potty. In fact, watching Miat made my puppy more likely to go as soon as he wasn't being watched.

Negative Reinforcement

Consequently, there were many times when minutes and even hours elapsed before I realized Miat had a potty accident. Lots of doggy potty training literature imply that there is nothing to be done if hours or even minutes have passed since the potty accident, dogs live in the moment, better luck next time and so on and so forth. As accidents continued to happen, I decided to impose a cost to pottying at any willy nilly location. When Miat peed or pooped in the wrong spot, I would calmly pick him up, walk to the pee or poop, point, say firmly yet gently "bad boy" and then immediately place him in my bathroom tub for five-to-ten minutes of timeout. I do think that this negative reinforcement helped Miat potty train faster.