Supplemental Spaces: The great outdoors.If you are fortunate enough to have exterior door access from your weaning pen, you can provide your puppies with access to outside. This provides an excellent opportunity for house training foundations. If you do not plan on taking your puppies outside regularly prior to send home you can skip this lesson.

I have an exterior door off my puppy room, not too far from the litter box area inside. I have installed a storm door with a doggie door, so when the main door is open my puppies can go in/out at will. Outside this door is a small cement patio, and off that I have installed a temporary puppy patio. This area is constructed with stall mats over landscape fabric over bare earth. Then I used T Posts to attach fencing too. I have a large drop off from the porch to the ground, too far for puppies to safely jump up/down every day. So I propped some pallets to make a slope, secured them to the ground, and glued stall mats on top. So now my puppies have a slope to walk up/down. In warm weather I use a pop up shade structure, and I can drape poultry netting over the top to further discourage predatory birds.

You can make the most of any area you have access too.

How do we use outdoor spaces as house training foundations?

Take puppies outside to void as frequently as is functional, once the puppies are old enough we do this after every meal, every nap, and first/last thing in the morning/night.
Always take treats to reinforce puppies for voiding outside
Once puppies will go directly outside and potty, you can attach a “Go Potty” cue to start teaching puppies to relieve themselves on cue.

Not only will this make house training much easier later, as puppies are imprinted that voiding outside is normal, but our indoor weaning pen will stay much cleaner! A real Win-Win.

Outdoor Spaces: Making the most of them.