My husband and I will be getting a rhodesian ridgeback puppy soon and we have read they can be stubborn/difficult to train at times. We have been reading all about establishing ourselves as the alpha dog which all seems to make perfect sense. I think I will have the hardest time with the 5 minute rule although I want to use this because it does make a lot of sense. The question I have is how to mesh crate/potty training with the 5 minute rule early on??? For example if the puppy is all excited in its crate when I get home...do I ignore him until he calms down...let him out to calm down (worried about inappropriate peeing..how to watch closely and ignore at same time)....OR go ahead and do what I think I need to do and get him outside quickly to pee in the right place of course followed by lots of praise. In the last case my question is... where does the 5 min rule come into play or does it simply have to wait until after potty training is well established??? Help with the application of the 5 minute rule as far as puppies go please!!! Thanks.
It is quite a gray area when it comes to dealing with puppies and the 5-minute rule. It is important that puppies learn where to go to the toilet, but it is also vital that they realize that they can't get what they want when they are excited. For a compromise, it would be probably best to take your puppy out to the toilet as soon as you get home, but do this without greeting it first. Only once it has peed in the right place do you shower it with attention and praise. By doing this, hopefully you can address both issues at once. If this is not really feasible, then you could wait until the toilet training was sorted out before advancing to the 5-minute rule, as house training should not take more than a few weeks to complete normally, and so this will leave you plenty of time to carry on with the rest of the training.
I hope this helps and all the best with your new puppy!
