Puppy Toilet Training: Should You Rub Their Nose in Poo?

Should you rub your puppy’s nose in poo after a toilet-training accident? No. This old puppy toilet training myth does not clearly teach your puppy that the garden is the right place to go. In fact, the lesson your puppy takes from the experience may be very different from the one you intended.

The advice has been passed down through generations, often by people who genuinely believed they were helping. But when we look at the learning involved, it starts to fall apart very quickly.

Over the years, I’ve heard versions of this advice from puppy owners again and again, usually from people who were simply repeating what they had once been told.

Need individual help? If puppy toilet training is becoming frustrating, my 1:1 Puppy Training Consultations let us look at your puppy’s routine, environment and day-to-day training together.

Why Were People Told to Rub a Puppy’s Nose in Poo?

There does not appear to be one credible person we can point to and say, “They invented this.” It is better understood as an old-fashioned toilet-training practice that was repeated from one generation of dog owners to the next.

The basic idea seems simple: make the accident unpleasant enough and the puppy will somehow understand not to do it again.

The problem is that this expects the puppy to work out an extraordinary amount of information from one very unclear experience.

What Are We Actually Expecting the Puppy to Understand?

For rubbing their nose in an accident to teach the lesson people intended, your puppy would somehow need to reason through something like this:

That is an enormous chain of reasoning to expect from having their face pushed towards something they produced earlier.

Nothing about that experience clearly tells your puppy which part was wrong, what they should have done differently, or where the correct toilet area is.

And there is a practical problem too. You started with one toilet-training accident. You may now have poo smeared further into the carpet, poo on your puppy’s face, a puppy who needs cleaning and a carpet that needs even more cleaning.

I’m struggling to see at what point in this process anyone thought, “Yes, this is going extremely well.”

Why Can It Look as Though Rubbing Their Nose in It Worked?

This is the part I think is often missed.

Someone may genuinely say, “We did this with our last dog and the accidents stopped.” That does not necessarily mean the punishment taught the lesson we think it did.

Several things are usually changing at the same time:

• Your puppy is getting older and developing better bladder and bowel control.
• You may be taking them outside more frequently.
• You may be getting better at spotting the times they are likely to need the toilet.
• Successful outdoor toileting may be being rewarded in other ways.
• Your puppy may simply be learning to avoid toileting while you are nearby.

So the accidents reducing does not prove that rubbing a puppy’s nose in poo taught “toilet outside”. Maturity, routine, supervision and learning are all happening together.

What Might Your Puppy Learn Instead?

You may think you are teaching, “Do not toilet in the house.”

Your puppy may learn something much simpler: “Do not toilet when that person is around.”

That is why punishment can sometimes be followed by puppies wandering behind furniture, leaving the room or waiting until nobody is nearby before toileting.

That can actually make toilet training harder. If your puppy becomes reluctant to toilet while you are nearby, you have fewer opportunities to see the behaviour you want and reward them for toileting in the right place.

For a deeper look at that learning process, see Should You Tell Your Puppy Off for Peeing Indoors?.

But My Puppy Looked Guilty

A puppy looking sheepish after an accident can make the whole thing feel very deliberate. You walk into the room, spot the poo, and suddenly your puppy lowers their head, avoids eye contact or looks worried.

That does not reliably prove they understand a previous “crime”. Research into the so-called guilty look found that dogs showed more guilty-looking behaviour in response to owner scolding, whether they had actually disobeyed or not. The study did not test whether dogs can ever experience guilt; it tested what prompts the familiar guilty-looking display. You can read the Horowitz study on the “guilty look” here.

In everyday life, your puppy may be responding to your posture, facial expression, tone of voice or a history of what tends to happen when you notice an accident.

What Should You Do After an Indoor Toilet Accident?

You do not need to turn every accident into a training session. Once the accident has happened, the useful information is usually in what happened beforehand.

• Clean the area thoroughly.
• Think about when your puppy last toileted.
• Consider whether they had just woken up, eaten, drunk, played or become excited.
• Ask whether the garden was too distracting for them to finish.
• Give them another opportunity sooner next time.
• Reward outdoor toileting when they finish, so the location becomes worth repeating.

If a puppy who had been progressing well suddenly starts having frequent accidents, or you notice a change in how often they are toileting, speak to your vet to rule out a medical cause.

For the full routine, reward timing, supervision and troubleshooting plan, use my Complete Guide to Toilet Training a Puppy. That guide covers the step-by-step process, while this article stays focused on the nose-rubbing myth.

“But We Were Just Outside!”

This is one of the most frustrating parts of puppy toilet training. You can spend 20 minutes in the garden, come back indoors and then discover that your puppy suddenly needs to go.

That does not mean they have come inside to make a point. Outside may have been distracting, they may not have fully emptied, or the urge may simply have become stronger once you came back in.

If that pattern keeps happening, look at the setup rather than adding consequences after the accident. My guide to 3 Puppy Toilet Training Mistakes to Avoid goes into those common timing and routine problems in more detail.

Toilet Training Without the Old Myths

Good toilet training is much less dramatic than rubbing noses in accidents. It is mostly about giving your puppy enough opportunities to succeed, making the right location worthwhile, supervising while the habit develops and adjusting the plan when something goes wrong.

If somebody once told you to rub your puppy’s nose in poo or wee, you are not alone. Training advice changes as our understanding improves. We can leave this particular method in the past and give puppies clearer information instead.

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