Training Advice for Positively Good Dogs by Kelly Spring, CPDT House Training Your Dog A dog has no innate understanding of where you think it is appropriate to potty and where you would rather he didn’t.  He really doesn’t know.  Seriously.  He can and will learn – but it will be much easier for both of you if you communicate it to him in a way that he can easily understand.  The holy grail of housetraining is: confinement, supervision and positive reinforcement. Crate Training: When you can’t actively supervise your dog, he should be confined to an area small enough that he won’t want to soil in it – a crate is a great confinement solution. The crate should be large enough that he can comfortably sit, lie down, and turn around, but not so large that he can soil one area of the crate and comfortably move away from