Owner Shares How She Taught Her Puppy To Be Potty Trained Using a Doorbell

A well trained dog is a happy dog, and one puppy has proven just that in a viral TikTok video with over 6.6 million views.

Marshall the four-month-old mini Australian Shepherd dog can now use a button to get his parents' attention when he wants to go outside to go potty. In the video, Marshall the adorable puppy can be seen getting used to the button, eventually successfully pressing it on his own to tell his parents he wants to go outside.

"We thought it would be helpful and entertaining to make a video explaining how we taught him to do it," Kennedy Starcevich, 26, from Burbank, California, told Newsweek, who trained Marshall with her fiancé Sam Miller, also 26. "We encouraged him to press the button then we immediately took him outside so he learned to associate the button with going outside," she added.

The couple trained Marshall to effectively use the button in just three weeks.

"When we brought Marshall home at two months old and started potty training him, we wanted to give him a tool to communicate with us that he had to go to the bathroom besides the traditional whining by the door or nudging the bells," explained Starcevich. "We are in the process of training Marshall to use the button in the car if he needs to go potty because we like to travel and take a lot of long car rides. That's why we chose the button because it's portable!"

Owning a dog requires time and commitment and the average cost of taking your dog to training classes is between $30 to $80 per class, according to the American Pet Products Association (APPA). Due to the costs, approximately 94 percent of dog owners take on some training at home, report the APPA.

Many users in the comments joked that their dogs would ring the bell when they simply wanted to go outside. "My dog would ring it to go outside like every two seconds," said one user. "We tried this and he would ring the bell just to go out and play. any suggestions on getting them to understand a walk not play?" said another.

Starcevich said: "He only presses the button about four to five times a day, after he presses the button he sits next to it and waits patiently for us to put his leash on and then right when he gets in the grass he does his business.

"In the beginning of training him to use the button, whenever he pressed it we would ask, 'do you have to go potty?' and then we would take him outside immediately whether we thought he had to go or not to ensure he knew that the button got him to the grassy area where he goes potty."

Starcevich and Miller would definitely recommend this technique to other dog owners. "We certainly think it helped Marshall with his potty training," said Miller. "He picked it up fast, but you have to put in the time and be committed to the technique for it to be a success."

The couple offered their top tips for other dog owners wanting to train their puppy using a button.

• "Keep a note of your puppy's bathroom schedule—We kept a notepad by the door and wrote down every time he went potty, even if he had an accident. That helped us learn his schedule and helped us determine if he was pressing the button to go potty or just to play outside.
• Every single time you take your dog outside to go potty, make sure they (or you) press the button even if it's early in the morning—Even when Marshall was two months old we would encourage him to press the button before we took him out.
• Try not to get discouraged and be consistent—Marshall had ups and downs of not wanting to press the button and pressing the button too much, but now he is a pro!"

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