If you’ve been on the internet searching for tips on housetraining a dog, especially if that dog is a new puppy, I’m sure you’ve seen it:

Potty train your puppy in 10 days! No, 7 days! Wait, 5 days! Actually, 3 days! No, better! Get in a time machine and potty train your puppy yesterday, or better yet, before they were even born!

Genuinely, pardon my saltiness; I just see these clickbait-y titles all the time. For me, they elicit nothing more than an audible groan.

But for dog owners, these videos set frustrating expectations for the timeline of how their dog should progress in their housetraining journey.

Yes, everyone wants their dog to stop peeing and pooping in their house as soon as possible. And in going through the process I detail in my article, How to Potty Train Any Dog, you will definitely start seeing results (probably quite significant results) within a day or two.

But internet trainer “influencers” alluding to the idea of a five-day housetraining start-to-finish are selling a lie.

This lie is harmful to dog owners because it sets up this expectation of how they should progress, where they should be by now, etc.

Even if some dogs do housetrain remarkably fast, this is not the norm and you should not base your expectations off it.

“I saw that guy on YouTube housetrain a puppy in 2.86 minutes, why did my dog suddenly have an accident after ten days?”

Cue the frustration. And frustration only ever makes for bad training.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your dog is to discard all “shoulds” about your housetraining journey, and forget about what others say about how long it should take your dog to get potty trained.

How Quickly Do Dogs Get Potty Trained?

It’s normal for dog owners to be itching to get some of their life back. It’s totally understandable to want to be able to just leave the new dog or puppy alone for an hour or two without worrying about messes. You want to be able to go out for a while with friends and not come home to a steaming pile, and you want to be able to leave your dog during your shift at work instead of having to pay someone to watch them or leave them with your friends. Obviously, dog owners want to know how long this takes.

So, if you can’t trust the thumbnails of influencer videos, how will you know how long it should take for your dog to get the idea of things?

Here are some realistic guidelines (not rules) of what to expect.

For puppies, larger breeds following the program I detail in this article will usually be housetrained (capable of being left alone for a few hours at a time without accidents) by around five or six months. Smaller breeds might take longer, up to nine months for some very tiny ones.

Being able to leave your puppy home alone for up to eight hours for the workday starts ranges from six months to a year old. Rare outliers will take even longer to be fully potty-proof for eight hours at a time.

Regardless, I always recommend having someone come check in on your dog to get them a potty break and some exercise if you are going to leave them alone for longer than five hours.

The individual dog plays a huge role, including their sex, age, breed, and more. Larger dogs tend to housetrain more smoothly because they have larger bladders. Oftentimes you’ll also find that male dogs can hold it a little longer than females of a similar size. And, some breeds are just shaped in a way that mean they may need more breaks throughout the day.

While these guidelines may help, the only true answer to how long it will take your dog to become potty-proof will really depend. It will depend on your dog, your training, and how consistently you stay the course to the training plan.

How Do I Potty Train My Dog Fast?

The fastest way to housetrain a dog is to stay the course with extreme vigilance. No secret technique will force your dog to be potty trained in three days. Your dog will take the time it needs to click and become a habit.

However, you can definitely reach a mess-free life very fast (as in, right away!) by carefully structuring and managing your dog’s time inside the house and richly rewarding their successes in going outside.

Staying on top of your potty schedule and monitoring your dog for its signals can make the process go from a never-ending series of cleanups to just one success after the other. Your dog will still take the same amount of time to do the actual training and have it become a habit, but your life will look a lot less smelly in the meantime.

We have a list of signals and times to take your dog outside while housetraining in my article, How to Know When To Take Your Dog Outside.

How Do You Know When Your Puppy Is Potty Trained?

Your puppy is fully potty trained when they completely understand that “inside” is off-limits for relieving themselves. If your dog has gone several weeks without eliminating in the house, even after a few hours alone at a time, you’re probably free of having to worry about it constantly.

But this takes much longer than many trainers let on to, because you will eventually need to generalize the behavior past your own home. A puppy is not potty trained if they are potty trained “except for stores, and my friend’s house.”

Even my adult doberman mix, Milo, did not fully understand about stores when he first came to me, despite being housetrained in the context of actual houses. We had one mess in a pet store and I quickly realized he needed some polishing up!

This is okay, and just part of the process. Refine it as you go.

When your dog is consistently going only outside for a prolonged period of time, and will even signal to you at times when they need to go in any indoor setting, congratulations! Your dog is housetrained.