Owning a small puppy offers lots of advantages. One of these is that if you don't want to walk him outdoors, you can teach him to eliminate on papers indoors. To start, get full-sized newspapers (not tabloids) and a sixteen-square-foot, wire-mesh exercise pen, available from puppy supply catalogs or by special order from a pet shop. Place the pen on an easy-to-clean floor and line the bottom with newspapers opened flat out. For one week, keep your puppy in the fully papered pen anytime you aren't supervising or exercising. Then, put a bed in the pen and gradually reduce the papered portion to one full-sized newspaper, overlapping five sheets to ensure proper absorption. Once he is pottying on the paper, open up the pen within a small room or hall. When he consistently soils on the paper, gradually give him access to the house, room by room, when you are able to supervise him. Shuttle him over to the papers if he attempts to go elsewhere. If he begins missing paper to any degree, follow the confinement and umbilical cording procedure described for outdoor training, except take puppy to the paper, rather than the outdoors, to eliminate.

Once trained, some paper-trained puppies only go on their papers; others prefer the outdoors but will use papers if necessary. You can papertrain a previously outdoor-trained puppy and vice versa, but you'll avoid extra work by deciding what you want up front.