Easiest Dog Breeds to Potty Train

In this article, I’ll explain why choosing a specific dog breed for potty training purposes is the wrong way of thinking. After reading this article, you will hopefully know how to choose the right dog breed for your situation and your future potty training success.

If you prefer watching my YouTube video related to this topic you can do so by watching the video below.

Firstly, I want to address the many web articles that suggest certain dog breeds for faster potty training without referring to any proper research.

For example, when you search in Google ‘easiest dog to house train’, you will find a couple of websites that give you a list of dog breeds that are the easiest to housebreak.

But on what grounds do they assume that those breeds are the easiest to house-train? 

When I read their articles, I did not see any reference to a study or scientific research done in this field. 

Also, most of the top websites on the first page of Google on this search term have no credibility in dog training or medicine whatsoever.

Cheatsheet.com is one of the websites that has created a list of dog breeds that are the easiest to housebreak.

The first breed they mention is the Australian shepherd dog. And there the first argument why they chose this dog breed is that ‘Cuteness (which is another website) points to the Australian shepherd as a dog breed that usually proves easy to housebreak.’ However, when looking at that mentioned link on the website of Cuteness, I do not find any reference to the Australian shepherd dog. 

And this is the risk of following advice on the internet or in books. One often thinks everything that the written word is the truth, especially when they mention other sources. But what if that other source has not done any research as well? And what if they also refer to non-credible resources?

Then they mention an article on TheNest.com by saying: “The Nest reports that Australian shepherd puppies naturally want to keep their living space clean, so crate training works particularly well for this breed.”

When reading that article on TheNest.com I see the following line: “An Australian shepherd puppy naturally will want to keep its living space clean, so if you keep her in a crate part of the time, she will learn quickly not to relieve herself in the house.”

When reading these first few lines, I can tell you that that article has been written quickly without doing any proper research on the topic. They know how to rank in Google for certain keywords, put advertisements on that page, and earn some money by doing so.

I have written one book about crate training your puppy, and I have written this book by interviewing 10 dog professionals and experts. They all told me that every dog breed naturally wants to keep its living space clean. Not only Australian shepherds. So saying that an Australian shepherd can be easily house-trained because it wants to keep its living space clean is not really a viable argument, in my opinion.

The same goes for many other articles on the web. So just to be clear, make sure you don’t believe everything you read in books or on the internet because most of it is fluff. Try to see if the author has really done their work by researching before writing something.

The second thing I would like to mention and to be clear, this is a GOOD resource, is a study made by Amy Learn and a few others back in 2019. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between body size and completeness of house-training. 

According to the investigators, a completeness house-trained dog is a dog that has eliminated outside for at least the last 2 months.

735 private dog owners completed their survey. They were asked questions about age at the time of adoption or purchase, level of obedience training, the role of the pet in the family, and medical disorders were included to rule in or out other contributing factors. 

The conclusion of this study was a statistically significant difference between large dogs and small dogs regarding the completeness of house-training.

Specifically, large dogs were more likely to be fully house-trained than small dogs. A small dog is defined as a dog of 20 pounds (9 kilograms), or less and a large dog is defined as a dog of 40 pounds (or 18 kilograms) or more.

Still, there is no definite answer to why small dogs are less house-trained than bigger dogs. They suggest that it might be because small dogs have a relatively high metabolism. Or because of the fact they have a smaller bladder size and therefore need to pee more often. Whatever the answer is, the researchers concluded that this is not the whole answer, which result in saying that size matters in puppy house-training regimes.

The following article gives a good explanation of the study above: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201909/is-house-training-more-effective-large-or-small-dogs.

So, in conclusion, What are my thoughts on this?

In my opinion, you should never adopt a dog based upon the fact that specific size or breed would result in it being faster and easier to be house-trained.

The sole reason you should choose a particular dog breed is that you find the character traits and history of the breed best suited for you and your situation. The origin of the dog predicts how the dog will function in everyday life. You will find out what you can expect of a dog.

For example, huskies were originally bred to run successfully for many kilometers or miles while pulling a sled. A husky, therefore, needs a lot of exercise, and when you don’t give it that exercise, the dog will feel frustrated. This can lead to various problems.

And to help you find the right breed for you I came up with a checklist for you to go through. Going through this checklist will help you find the best dog for you and your situation.

You can download this checklist for free to your mobile phone or your computer or laptop. Please click here to download the free checklist.

Well, there you have it. My thoughts on what are the easiest dog breeds to house-train.

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If this article has given you a little bit of value, then please leave me a comment below.

Also, please leave a comment below and tell me what name you want to give to your future dog.