Setting Up Your Daily Routines


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Setting Up Your Daily Routines

Setting up a routine to structure your dog's day is good for a couple reasons: First, a routine makes the day more predictable, and your Yorkie will feel more secure and calm if he knows what happens when. Second, it teaches your pup that good things come to dogs who wait. If for example, your puppy knows that as soon as he gets up he heads outside to go to the bathroom and that breakfast(yippee!) comes after that, he's more able to wait to relieve himself. And once outside, he's more motivated to take care of his business so that he can partake in the yummy breakfast you've painstakingly prepared.
REMEMBER! One thing you have going for you is that dogs are creatures of habit. They thrive on routine, and they learn through repetition. By setting up a daily routine that you stick with, and by enforcing the rules and expectations in the same way every time, your puppy can't help but learn how to behave. The key is CONSISTENCY.

Dining Schedule

Although many people leave dry food out all day long and let their pets graze, this isn't such a good idea for puppies in general, or Yorkie pups in particular.
1)Regular meals mean (more) predictable bathroom breaks: If you understand that puppies usually have to eliminate within a few minutes after eating, you can more accurately time your treks outside.
2) Yorkie pups are susceptible to hypoglycemia(low blood sugar): By serving your puppy regularly scheduled meals throughout the day, you can 1)ensure that she gets the appropriate nutrients throughout the day and 2) monitor how much she eats--potentially important info if you have to take her to the vet for a hypoglycemic episode.
3) You reinforce your status: For later puppy training to be successful, you need to be the leader, and your dog needs to recognize your leadership. One of the easiest ways to demonstrate your leadership is to control the food.
When you set up a feeding schedule, keep in mind that Yorkies under 12 weeks old should get four small meals a day; puppies between 12 and 24 weeks should get three small meals daily.(After 24 weeks, your puppy can probably move to two meals a day that adults get.) Following is a suggested feeding schedule for your puppy; note that if she's over 12 weeks old, you can cut out the meal before bedtime:
1)First meal: In the morning, right after first bathroom break
2)Second meal: Around noon
3)Third meal: Early evening
4)Fourth meal(for puppies under 12 weeks): About a half hour before bed, followed by one last bathroom break
REMEMBER: Make sure fresh water is available to her at all times.

Potty Breaks

When your Yorkie puppy is young, you're expecting too much if you expect him to be potty trained in a couple weeks. First, no puppy can be potty trained until he's physically ready. Second, Yorkies generally take longer to potty train than other breeds.
You can do a lot of things to set yourself up for potty training success, and one of the most important strategies is to schedule regular potty breaks early on. At the very least, take your puppy out at the following times:
1) Shortly after a meal: The digestive process in puppies is amazingly fast. A few minutes after your pup eats, head to the bathroom area.
2) At regular intervals throughout the day: The younger your pup is, the shorter these intervals should be. Start out at every hour, for example, and then as your pup matures, extend the breaks to every hour and a half, then every two hours, and so on.
3)Immediately before bedtime, and immediately after getting up in morning.
If you're gone for most of the day and plan to keep your pup in his crate, his potty routine is going to be dictated more by your schedule than by his bladder. In that case, make sure you give him a chance to eliminate immediately before he gets into his crate and as soon as he gets out.
REMEMBER: By scheduling regular bathroom breaks, you teach your puppy where the appropriate bathroom area is and reduce or eliminate accidents in the house--both good starts for the housetraining that comes later.

Bedtime Rituals

Bedtime is another time when routine is important. You don't have to put your pup to bed at the same time every night, but you do need to set up a bedtime routine that you follow every night. Your bedtime ritual should include these three elements:
1)Settle down time: Everybody likes to relax a little before bedtime, so give your puppy a chance to do just that. At least a half hour before bed, stop all playing.
2)Bathroom break: Right before you put your puppy to bed, take her outside to go to the bathroom.If she doesn't go after a reasonable amount of time, take her back in(don't let her turn this into playtime). Wait a while--keep your eyes peeled!--and try again.
3)Bedtime announcement:As soon as you bring your puppy in from going to the bathroom, put her in her crate and say"Bedtime." Until she associates the word with the action, you have to tuck her in.

Pre-Training Begins

Me and My Shadow: When your puppy first comes home, he doesn't know any of your house rules and will break them one by one, or all simultaneously, if you leave him to his own devices. So you need to make sure that, whenever your puppy isn't confined to his area or his crate, he's with you.
How do you do that without following your puppy from room to room? Easy. You make him follow you.
Get yourself a leash with a clasp at both ends. Attach one end to your puppy's collar; attach the other end to your belt loop. Then wherever you go, he goes. This technique
1)Teaches your puppy to follow you:Leaders lead. Your dog will be happier and more likely to follow your lead(and your rules) if you make it clear that you're the boss. In dog parlance, your the alpha dog.
2)Keeps him safe:You can't watch a puppy who's in another room and out of your site.
3)Lets you keep an eye out for signs that he needs to go to the bathroom:The best tool for housebreaking Yorkies is your consistency and diligence.
If you use this strategy, keep these pointers in mind:
1)Make following you a good thing. Don't drag him and don't jerk him around. Call him to you and praise him for coming.
2)Be careful where you step. Never forget that you have a little gal following you around.
3)Make sure the leash is long enough to give the puppy a little roaming room.
4)Give him frequent breaks. Let him off the leash so he can explore and play. When you stop in a room for a period of time and can watch him.
5)Keep him tethered to you until you can trust him on his own. This stage may lasts weeks.
WARNING! Don't let your children imitate this move. Don't leave the leash on your puppy to drag around the house. And NEVER leave a restrained puppy alone. Yorkies are good climbers, and a dragging leash can easily become a hangman's rope.

Setting Boundaries

If you don't know how you expect your puppy to behave, how will your puppy know what is appropriate? So the first thing you need to do is figure out how you want your adult dog to behave--know what is and isn't acceptable to you.
After you know what your expectations are, enforce the rules religiously. If your puppy can sometimes chew on your son's favorite action figure and other times gets into trouble for it, she won't learn that chewing on the action figure is wrong. What she will learn is that she shouldn't do it in front of you--not the lesson you intended.
So when you communicate your expectations to your puppy, communicate them consistently.If kid's toys are off limits, everytime you see her with a kid's toy, you give her a puppy toy instead. If you don't want her to beg for table scraps, NEVER feed her from the table. And insist that friends and family do the same!
If you don't want her on the furniture, never let her up there no matter how cute, get her her own bed to lay beside you.
REMEMBER--What you do in the first days and weeks that your puppy's home tells your dog what to expect. If you don't start off with your rules firmly in place, future training becomes that more difficult.