My house is a little like a house with a new puppy in it right now. There’s a lot of whisking of a little one away from an activity, lots of partying while a little one goes potty, and some self-beration as I clean up pee from my floors (thankfully, they are wood, not carpet). I’m even using the Nature’s Miracle I keep on hand in my house. However, there is no puppy in my house. What there is, is a toddler learning potty-training.

I’ve come to realize more and more as I go through this process with my family, that there are loads of similarities between potty-training a puppy and potty-training a child. There’s lots of constant supervision. There’s bound to be messes, and those messes are cleaned up immediately and appropriately. There’s lots of thinking about motivation. After all, if my son pees his pants, that means he doesn’t have to stop playing with play-doh until we find out about it. So there’s lots of thinking of how to motivate him to leave what he’s doing, go potty, and then come back to it when it’s so much easier to just stay and continue playing while the bodily function occurs.

One of the major differences is that humans can be lazy. We slap diapers on our kids and for the first couple years of their lives, they are basically taught to soil themselves (even if you change the diaper right away, they still soiled themselves). It doesn’t matter as much when your child needs to go potty, because they can just go in their diaper, unless the diaper leaks. There is little motivation for the child to ‘hold it’, especially if they’ve become used to soiling themselves (after two years, it’s not a stretch). It’s not until they are in underwear and you know immediately when they go and messes begin to become an issue that the parent in mainstream culture really begins to have to pay attention to their child’s cues, whisk them to the potty regularly, and motivate, motivate, motivate.

The timetable (for my toddler, anyway) is very much like a puppy’s. Every thirty minutes we are running to the potty area (for Amos, this is a toilet of course, but for puppies it’s the potty area outside). We help Amos get on the pot, we praise him as he goes, and we help him clean up. We give him a huge party and my goal is always to pump him up so he runs around with a big grin on his face screaming at the top of his lungs, “I go potty!”. When I’m potty training a puppy, it’s much the same. Lead them to where you want them to go, praise gently as they go, and then party like there’s no tomorrow and until your neighbors decide ‘yep, that’s it- she’s officially crazy’. Pumping up the pottier (in either species) and letting them know they did what you’re expecting is huge (stickers and M&Ms work well too for toddlers, and treats for puppies). Helping them to not make mistakes is also huge- you don’t want to confuse your puppy (or your toddler) by dilly dallying and not paying attention. The more successes they have, the quicker they learn what to do and the cleaner they (and your house) stay!

Now, I’m certainly not going to say that potty-training is the same for both species. I’m just struck by the similarities. I still find myself scratching my head with my toddler and admitting I haven’t a clue what I’m doing- I’m just guessing based on what I know about what motivates him, how organisms in general learn, and slightly more specifically, what I know about housetraining a puppy. We have good days and bad days, but as always, it’s progress that counts- with either species.