If you search online for such keywords as ‘house training a dog’ or ‘housebreaking a puppy’ or ‘adult dog house training’ you will find all sorts of resources and dog training articles about the best way to stop your dog from going to the bathroom in your house.

One thing you will also find are certain products, sprays, and cleaners that claim to fix any house training and housebreaking problem.  The idea behind the spray is that you spray it on the area where the dog has had an accident and it gets rid of the odor well enough that the dog wont go to the bathroom again.  I have also seen some cleaners that advertise that their formula will repel any dog from going to the bathroom in the house again.  Do these cleaner work?

The reality is that these accident cleaners may help a housebreaking problem, but it is very unlikely that they would ever fix a house training problem.

The reason why they may help a house training problem is that if you get rid of the odor entirely some dogs wont go back to that spot to relieve themselves.  Many dogs will, however.  Many dogs don’t care whether or not there is an odor left over, they just feel like going to the bathroom wherever they please.

Marketers of these products hope to sell their cleaners by offering the quick fix.  It just doesn’t work that way, though.  When it comes to house training your dog there aren’t too many shortcuts you can take.  It all boils down to four steps to a housebroken dog:

1- Supervision

2- Correcting your dog when they do go to the bathroom in the wrong spot

3- Encouraging the dog to go to the bathroom in the right spot

4- Keeping your dog on a general food and bathroom schedule

It isn’t a bad thing to get those cleaners to help you in your house training efforts.  Just realize that you likely wont get the whole way there and you need sound training principles to get you over the hump.  Good luck.