Puppy pee pads or puppy training pads can be a huge help when you have a puppy or dog you’re trying to housebreak. Pre-puppy-pee-pads we’d use newspaper, but in the post-puppy-pee-pad era cleanup is so much easier! Puppy pads come in a variety of sizes, but most are layers of absorbent material lined with a thin plastic layer on the back, to try to stop pee from reaching the floor. (Puppy pads are also great for lining cat or dog travel carriers in case a pet gets car sick or has an accident.) You might be thinking, how hard can it be, I put the pad down on the floor, what more do I need to know? Well, read on…
- Puppies like to chew! Puppy pads can be unsafe if chewed and swallowed. Using the biggest size pads available and weighing down the edges with puppy-safe heavy objects (like bricks) or using a commercially made puppy pad holder that locks the pad into a hard plastic frame can reduce this risk.
- Puppies don’t have good aim. If you have a brand new puppy (or dog) who you’re keeping confined say to the kitchen, if you just put down one pad, chances are good your puppy will miss. (It is totally normal to have lots of misses in the beginning. Puppies are babies and need time to learn.) You can help a puppy improve his or her aim by starting out with many pads covering half of their confined area, then gradually make the puppy pad area smaller removing one pad every few days.
- Pads outside. You can take a used puppy pad outside if you’ll be training the puppy to go to the bathroom outside, and put the puppy on it outside to encourage the going to the bathroom outside behavior.
Don’t forget the other super important P word with puppies: Praise! Praise your puppy any time you see her going pee or poop on her pad. (Say that 10 times fast!) Praise will help speed along the process of training your puppy to go on pads.