I have a 1-year-old Bichon Frise dog, which has been paper-trained, but now I want to train him to do his business outdoors. Is it still possible to retrain him?
Its never too late to house train your dog to go outdoors. However, you have to be sure that that’s the only place the dogs allowed to go now. You can’t teach a dog to use paper in the house and then expect it to automatically go outside. The paper is no longer an option now for the dog. The best way to reinforce this fact is to confine the dog to a training cage when it is unsupervised. As soon as you take the dog out of the cage, take it outside to eliminate. If the dog goes, praise it thoroughly and allow it to run loose in the house. If the dog does not go, and you are sure that he didn’t, then bring it back in the house, put it in the cage and try again in 5 minutes later. Consistency is the key in training any animal. If you could follow the dog around the house all day long, and correct it when it makes a mistake, it would learn right away. But in today’s lifestyles, that is not possible. And this is where the training cage will make your life easier as well as your dogs.
