We introduce the puppies to their first litter box, a commercial one called a UgoDog at about three weeks. It’s a flat shallow tray with a grate on top that’s about the same height as their bed. Which makes it very convenient for their little legs to toddle off the bed onto the litter box.

By about four and one half weeks of age, they’ve gotten their sea legs and are much more steady. Plus they are making bigger poops which get smashed into the grate, making things hard to clean.

So that’s about the time to introduce them to the regular litter box which they’ll be using from now on.

The first box has the side cut down for easy access. It’s about the same length as the puppy pen. So one side is the bed with food and water and the other half is the litter box. This one has a layer of pine pellets in the bottom. The pine pellets are just pine shavings compressed with wax (made for burning in a pellet stove). So they are safe even if a puppy decide to taste one, which they occasionally do. We buy these at our local farm/feed store.

For those of you getting a puppy soon, you’ll want to get a bag of these to have one hand. You can also buy pine pellets at a pet store, but it will be a much smaller bag with a much bigger price tag! And please don’t be tempted to buy cat litter or paper pellets. Stick with the pine pellets.

It does get messy with them tracking pellets everywhere, because hey, they’re fun to play in and mom sometimes digs in them too! But the pine smell is pleasant and scooping little poops out with a cat litter scoop is easy. Then once a day, I’ll sift the whole box to get the sawdust out and replaced with more pellets as needed. When the pellets get wet they disintegrate and turn to sawdust.

Litter box training puppies has been a great addition to our puppy raising program as it helps the puppies learn a specific and appropriate place to relieve themselves. And also keeps thing much cleaner and more sanitary. Puppies can be messy!