How to Potty Train an Adult Rescue Dog

Attempting to potty train an adult rescue dog yourself can be a challenging task. Imagine the nightmare of coming home to find one or more messes on the floor. Perhaps on your new carpet. The last thing you feel like doing after coming home from a day at work or night out is getting the cleaning materials out and having to clean the mess up and make everywhere smell nice again.

The problem is carpets don't easily recover from this kind of soiling too easily.

We had this problem with our rescue dog, a great Dane. The difficulty we had is that this dog was used to being outside. Well after a bit of head scratching we came up with a solution of our own.

Crate training. The basics are that you buy a crate bigger in size than your dog, bring it home and let your dog get used to it for a few days. You want the dog to get used to being in the crate, and there are a variety of ways you can go about doing this. It is a stage by stage process of acclimatising your dog to her new home so you need to be patient at all times.

When the dog is in the crate you need to learn to spot the signs that the dog needs the toilet. You take her out of the crate at regular intervals for a potty break. The goal is to help the dog hold it for longer when out of the crate.

Rewards are important in teaching her this behavior, and always be patient with your dog.