How to Train a Dog in an Apartment

Apartments make four specific things harder and everything else is the same as any other dog. Those four are potty training, because you are seventy feet and an elevator from grass. Barking, because your neighbor shares a wall. Door and hallway arousal, because there is constant traffic six feet from your dog's head. And settling, because there is nowhere for an excited dog to go. Solve those four deliberately and apartment dogs turn out just as well trained as house dogs, often better, because the owner has to be intentional.

Potty training when you are five floors up

The whole problem is transit time. A puppy that signals it needs to go has about ninety seconds, and your trip to the street takes four minutes. So stop waiting for signals and run a hard schedule instead.

• Take the puppy out every forty five minutes for the first two weeks. By the clock, on an alarm, whether or not the dog has signaled.
• Carry small dogs to the elevator. Not forever, just through the training period. Walking through a lobby is where accidents happen.
• Have a go to spot within thirty seconds of the door. The same patch of grass or mulch every time. Same route, same spot, so the location becomes a cue.
• Use a potty cue from day one. Say your word as the dog starts, praise quietly as it finishes, and reward outside, not when you get back inside. This is worth real effort in an apartment because eventually you want to say the word in the rain and have it work in twenty seconds.
• Keep a full accident kit by the door. Enzymatic cleaner and paper towels. Speed matters on carpet.

I would avoid indoor pads and turf trays unless you are physically unable to get downstairs. They work, and the cost is that most dogs then take an extra two or three months to fully generalize to outdoors only.

Barking, because the walls are shared

Hallway noise is the trigger in almost every apartment case. Footsteps, doors, the elevator chime. The dog cannot see the source, which makes it worse, and it happens forty times a day, which means enormous rehearsal.

Two changes handle most of it. First, block the sound line: white noise machine near the door, running whenever you are home and whenever you leave. Second, change the meaning of the sound. For a week, every time you hear footsteps in the hall, mark and toss a treat away from the door, before the dog reacts. Twenty or thirty reps and most dogs start turning to look at you at the sound of the hallway instead of charging the door.

Also move the dog's bed away from the entry. A dog whose resting place is eight feet from a door it is worried about has no chance.

Hallway and elevator manners

Teach a sit at the threshold before the door opens, every single time, in both directions. Ten seconds of work that prevents the door dash and lowers arousal before you enter a shared space.

In the elevator, the dog sits in the corner facing you, not the doors. Practise this with the elevator stationary if you can, for two or three sessions. When the doors open on another floor and there is a person there, your dog is already sitting and looking at you, which is a much better starting position than nose to the crack.

In hallways, walk your dog on the side away from doors. Take corners wide. If someone is coming, turn and go the other way rather than passing at three feet in a corridor, which is the tightest, worst greeting space that exists.

Building the settle

In a small space the place command is not optional, it is the whole game. Pick a bed with defined edges and put it somewhere with a view of the room but not of the front door. Thirty minutes a day of the dog on that bed while you cook, work, or watch something. Silent resets when the dog breaks.

Expect fifteen to twenty resets on day one and two or three by day ten. Once you have it, an apartment dog with a real place command is easier to live with than a house dog without one, because the dog has a job that fits the space.

Exercise, honestly

You need to leave the building more than a house owner does, and there is no way around it. Two structured walks and one longer outing where the dog gets to move freely, ideally a fenced field or a quiet park with a long line. Stairs, if you have them and the dog is over a year old, are excellent conditioning in bad weather. Ten flights is a real workout for most dogs.

What you should not do is substitute indoor fetch down a hallway. Skidding stops on hard floors are how young dogs get hurt, and it builds arousal in the exact room you want the dog to be calm in.

Loose leash walking matters more in an apartment than anywhere else, because you are on leash from the moment you leave the door. Download the Loose Leash blueprint Practise it in the hallway before you take it to the street.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.