Housebreaking your beagle puppy is vital - especially when your puppy is around 8-12 weeks of age. I will cover the wrong and the right way to housebreak your puppy. I have seen this many times - a puppy pees or poops on the floor and the owner would point to the droppings and "punish" their dog. But what's wrong about this is that your beagle doesn't know that he's not supposed to poop or pee in the house so they get confused. Not only that, they have no clue why you're mad and they create a mental picture that "poop/pee is bad", not the action of pooping or peeing in that spot is bad.

This is why next time your puppy does his job where he's supposed to he will still feel guilty thinking that it will make you mad. This is the wrong way of attempting to housebreaking your puppy - which simply won't work. If your puppy won't know what you're referring to when you're mad, they won't know what behavior to change to prevent you from getting mad. Think about it - dogs can only think about the present - they don't have a recollection of events that happened last week, yesterday, or even 5 minutes ago. So if dogs have such bad memory then how do we housebreak them?

There are 2 tricks to this. Trick #1 is to catch him in the act - this will help him associate the "act" of releasing inside the house is bad. But that alone isn't good enough. Now he knows where he's not supposed to do it, but how does he know where he CAN do it?

This brings us to trick #2 which is bringing him outside, waiting for him to finish the job and then praise and reward after he's done it in the right place! Don't underestimate the power of praise - your beagle loves praise.