House breaking a puppy is an easy job if began at an early stage not later than 8 weeks. When we were housebreaking our dog, Taffy when she was 6 weeks old, we used a lot of praise to encourage her and completely avoided punishment. Like clockwork, we never forgot to follow the four important elimination times – after waking, eating, playing, before the times in the crate and many times in between. If she took more than a minute to “go”, we took her back inside and followed up with another visit to the elimination area in the next five minutes. Soon she was the master of her own schedule. There are bound to be some accidents, don’t be harsh on your puppy.   House breaking a puppy should not break your puppy’s cheerful spirit.