In order to make any housetraining plan work, you must develop a schedule for feeding your puppy or adult, so that you can more predictably estimate when your puppy or dog will need to relieve himself.

How Food, Exercise, and Water Fit In

Providing your dachshund with daily exercise, plenty of fresh water, and consistent feeding times is critical to making a “regular” dachsie. If your dachshund is fed at varying hours, you'll never really be sure when he needs to defecate next. Exercise helps to keep your dog regular. Water is not only important in keeping your dachshund hydrated, it's also important in keeping your dachshund's food intake moving through his gastrointestinal pipeline.

When you put all these components together in a regular, formulated housetraining plan, your job of training — and your dachshund's job of understanding what you want him to do — becomes much simpler. The following guidelines will help you develop a schedule:

• Plan to allow your dog to relieve himself immediately upon getting up in the morning.

• Encourage your dog to relieve himself before you go on your early-morning walk.

• Feed your dachshund at the same times every day roughly an hour before or after you've walked him in the morning, again at noon (if you have a puppy), and an hour before or after you've returned from your walk in the evening.

When you're first beginning your dachshund's housetraining, it's okay to pick up the dog's water approximately two hours before you plan on retiring to bed. This can help with middle-of-the-night urges until your dachsie gets into the swing of things.

• Give your dachsie 10 to 20 minutes to finish each meal, and then pick up the remaining food.

• Offer fresh, cool water at feeding times, during and after exercise, and at all other times your dachshund is up and playing. (Do not put a water bowl in your puppy or adult's crate; the dachshund will knock the bowl over and wet his bedding.)

The Reward System

With housetraining, as with any other training, you will find that consistency in your training methods, along with positive reinforcement, achieves the best results with the longest retention. Positive reinforcement is the rewarding of good behaviors and the ignoring of undesirable behaviors. Applying positive reinforcement to house-training means praising your dachshund while she is relieving herself in the correct spot and giving additional praise and a small treat when she finishes.

Methods That Don't Work

Under no circumstances should you ever shout at your dog if he is making (or has made) a mistake. Don't jerk him by the collar or use any other harsh methods, such as rubbing his nose in his excrement.

These methods do not work. If you find a mistake and punish your dog for it, he really doesn't have any idea why he is being punished. Or he will incorrectly think he is being punished for something completely different. For example, let's say you've found a “surprise” behind the couch. So, what do you do? “Joey!!! Come here!!!” Your faithful dachshund trots over to see what you want, although your tone of voice may make him cringe a bit coming over or look uncertain — he may sense that you are angry, but he doesn't know why.

Then, once your dachshund comes to you, instead of praising him profusely for coming when you called, you grab him by the collar and proceed to rant and rave and say all kinds of things in a mean voice. Then you drag him to his crate and slam the door.

What have you done? You've done two very bad things. First, you've just taught your very intelligent dachshund that if he comes when you call, you are going to berate and possibly beat him. Second, you've taught him that going into the crate is a bad thing; it is a punishment.