Potty Training Programs Create Loyal Clients

How long has it been since you had a puppy in the house? It’s funny how quickly we forget the sleepness nights and focused effort required in housetraining a new puppy. As pet professionals you can be an important partner to new puppy parents on these issues, increase revenues and gain a loyal lifetime client.

An important part of our mission when we opened Urban Tails was to help our clients include a dog in their busy lives. As an urban pet center it was logical to offer a puppy potty and crate training program that helped busy professionals train their puppies.

Every day they brought puppies as young as 8 weeks to our center and we provided potty and crate training services during the work day. We advised the schedule they should follow on nights and weekends and served as their resource for all non-medical new puppy questions. The program was very popular and successful in house-training puppies plus helping them learn to rest quietly in a crate.

We had offered the program for almost 10 years when Archie joined our family as a 10-week old puppy. I clearly remember that first night at home sleeping on the couch and thinking that Archie would never learn to rest quietly in a crate. In fact, his first day at Urban Tails for potty training I told them he was going to be their challenge as he cried and whined incessantly. They smiled politely and told “mom” to go back to her office and let the professionals do their job. I think it was day two of our program when Archie quietly went into his crate at night only whining when he did need to potty.

As a puppy parent and pet professional I LOVE puppy potty-training programs. They benefit everyone involved and are easy to implement. The most important requirements are an attention to detail, patience and love for puppies. Following is the basic formula used for our program:

• Puppies were required to come every day Monday – Friday
• Parents paid by the week for the program and the weekly pricing changed as less labor was required (e.g., puppy rested longer in the crate between potty breaks). Calculate your labor cost per day and price the program so it is profitable on a weekly basis.
• An appropriate sized crate was used in our center and at home to provide consistency for the puppy
• Our goal was to work with the puppy until they reached 4 hours between potty breaks
• We maintained a detailed log of the puppy’s day including eliminations, crate rest time, play time sessions and social play sessions with other puppies or adult dogs
• The size and age of the puppy would dictate how long the puppy stayed in the crate between potty breaks the first week. It is important to set the puppy up for success so we would start with shorter time periods and increase by 15 minute increments as the puppy demonstrated it was physically able to wait longer. Once we found the right time the first couple of days that would be maintained the rest of the week. The next week we would increase the rest period by 15 minutes.
• In addition to potty and crate training we would work with the puppy to walk on a leash and basic cues like sit and wait. We also encouraged socialization with many people, dogs and our two house cats. Positive behavior was rewarded and inappropriate chewing, jumping or demand barking discouraged.
• Each day at pick-up we would review the puppy’s day with the pet parent and make recommendations on continuing the house training at home. We would get feedback on how life was going at home after the weekend and help troubleshoot issues and concerns.
• When the puppy graduated from our potty program in most cases they went right into our dog daycare program. Since we socialized the puppy in our center they did not have to go through an evaluation session to join our daycare.

One lesson learned from Archie being in our program is that he was not socialized enough outside the center. He is not good with children and although that is not an issue in our daily life, it was a concern when my toddler twin nephews visited. He snapped at them, which required keeping him separated or on-leash at all times during their visit.

An important enhancement to the program outlined would be to intentionally add more socialization exercises. It would be easy to add the components of the Puppy Socialization Package outlined in this month’s bonus. This would create a complete puppy care package for new puppy parents.

Our clients were very happy with the program and their house-trained puppies. The majority would become weekly daycare clients and often repeat puppy clients. The program was a great revenue generator as most puppies were there at least four weeks. We loved caring for puppies and being the professional resource to make the trials and tribulations of puppyhood a little bit easier.