When a French Bulldog reaches about two months of age, it is already time for serious training. If we follow a scientific and steady training plan at that point, the dog can usually learn to eliminate in a designated place within about a week. After around twenty days, it will rarely relieve itself in the bed area, and after around thirty days, the habit is generally much more stable.
When a puppy first arrives home, if toilet training is not handled properly, the dog will urinate and defecate everywhere, which becomes a major problem for the owner. Some people think that if the toilet area smells like urine, the dog will naturally use it, and some products even imitate ammonia-like odors to attract dogs to eliminate there.
In fact, this method of using newspapers or toilet paper with a urine smell usually fails, because dogs do not like to urinate where they already smell their own waste. Even if the surface seems dry and only a faint odor remains, a dog's sharp sense of smell still tells it that the place is ?dirty,? which makes it more likely to eliminate elsewhere.
So How Should Toilet Training Actually Be Done?
The key lies in understanding canine instincts. In the wild, after a mother dog gives birth in the den, the puppies are unable to urinate or defecate on their own. The mother stimulates the groin area with her tongue and then cleans away the waste so the den remains clean. If urine or feces scent remains, it can act as a signal to predators. Therefore, once puppies learn to eliminate on their own, their natural instinct is to do so away from the nest.
From this instinct, we can understand that the toilet area should be as far as possible from the dog's nest. Many people nowadays let their dogs move freely on balconies, in courtyards, or all over the house, but few set up a proper doghouse or sleeping place that functions like a den. Yet the presence or absence of such a nest has a huge effect on toilet training. The owner should first provide a doghouse or fixed sleeping place, then place the toilet area some distance away from it. Each time the dog leaves the sleeping place, the owner should take it directly to the toilet. At the beginning, even if you tell the dog to hurry up and pee, it may not be able to do so right away. In that case, a wire pen or barrier can be used around the toilet area, keeping the dog there until it finishes eliminating. Once it does so, it can be let out again. During normal hours, the dog may move around more freely indoors, but when the owner goes out or sleeps at night, it should return to its sleeping area. Over repeated practice, the dog will form a conditioned reflex: as soon as it is taken to the toilet area, it will understand that it should eliminate there. Once that stage is reached, the barrier is no longer necessary. And as mentioned earlier, using old newspapers carrying urine scent is not really helpful. After the dog eliminates, clean paper and pads should be replaced right away. That is the correct way to teach toilet behavior.
The key point is to separate the dog's sleeping place from its toilet and to take the dog to the toilet as soon as it leaves its resting area, so that the dog forms a clear association. Many trainers believe that when toilet training fails, the reason is almost always that the dog is allowed to roam the room freely without having a fixed sleeping place. When a dog has no stable private space, it feels as if the whole room is its territory and must stay on constant alert to defend it. That creates stress. This is why some dogs bark madly or even act aggressively whenever a stranger enters the home. If the dog has been given a secure nest from an early age, it is more likely to ignore things such as the doorbell or thunder.
Some people believe that if a dog eliminates in the wrong place, they should immediately scold it, press its head toward the urine, and punish it. In fact, this is a major mistake. Even though the dog is punished, it cannot understand the human logic behind the punishment. Instead, it may simply think that urinating itself leads to being beaten and become afraid to eliminate at all. Pressing the dog toward its own urine may seem to create temporary results, but in truth the dog is only suppressing the urge because it feels afraid. Sooner or later the wrong behavior will return. The correct method is to remove the dog from the area immediately, clean the urine silently, and eliminate the odor completely. In most cases, failure in toilet training comes from letting the dog move freely indoors without having a proper sleeping place. Finding the real cause is the only way to solve the problem at the root.