If you’re reading this post, chances are you have, or are about to get a new puppy. Such an exciting time! I have put together my top tips to hopefully help you as you get your puppy adjusted to your life, home, and routine.
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Puppy Proofing
Before you bring home your puppy make sure you puppy proof your house. If you want to make sure your puppy will not go in certain rooms or upstairs, use gates to block off those areas. Once they’re trained, you can always take them down. It’s recommended that you get down on the floor at the eye level of your puppy so you can spot things that they might get into. Make sure loose cords are tied up, and anything you don’t want them to get into is out of reach.
Be strict at first–you can always ease up later. You do not want your puppy to have reign of the house until they are 100% potty trained, and you can fully trust them to not be destructive.
Crate Training
Crate training is your best friend. We cannot stress this enough. Puppies are not mature enough to sleep wherever they want. In general, if you cannot supervise your puppy they should be in their crate. This is the only way to guarantee they are safe, not peeing or pooping inside the house, and not getting into something they should not be. It’s much easier to start strict and loosen the reigns once your puppy matures, than to let them develop bad habits and have to back track with training and enforcing the rules.
So, make sure you have a crate. Don’t pick one that’s too big—puppies will not pee in the area they sleep in, but if the crate is big enough, they may tend to relieve themselves in a distant corner of the crate. For Copper and Lily, we started off with a 30-inch crate and it was perfect.
And make it cozy! We recommend buying a crate cover and sherpa bumper lining to make their crate as comfy as possible. When we first brought Copper home, we didn’t know this trick, and he whined a lot when he first went in for the night. As soon as we draped a towel over the crate, and rolled up a blanket in the corner, it felt like his own personal cave and seemed like he was laying next to his litter with the rolled up blanket, and he calmed right down.
They will most likely not love their crate at first. Let them cry it out—try not to soothe them too much. It’s very similar to a baby, they need to learn to self-soothe. Copper and Lily did not cry more than 5 minutes each night for only 2-3 nights and then it was smooth sailing. Puppies have an instinct to yelp and cry if they are separated from the “pack.” Let your puppy sleep in a crate next to your bed where they can see you so they don’t feel lost or separated from the pack.
One thing we also recommend is to always give your puppy a treat every time they go in their crate. If they have some sort of treat, or their favorite bone or chew toy, they will learn that good things happen when they go in their crate. Sometimes we will find Copper asleep in his crate with the door open now because he loves it so much.
If you take your puppy out in the middle of the night because they are crying, make it fast. Do not talk to them or play with them. Simply take them out of their crate, carry them outside, let them pee, then pick them up and put them back in their crate with a treat. You don’t want to show them that anything fun happens when they do this.
Treats
Get good treats. We made the mistake of trying to train with kibble at first. It worked, but once we started to use higher value treats (such as freeze dried liver), Copper and Lily became super dogs. Our dog trainer put it like this: “I like broccoli. It’s fine. If you want me to do something for broccoli, sure I’ll do it if it’s not too much trouble. But if I’m in a distracted situation and you ask me to do something for broccoli I’m going to completely ignore you. Now, if you have an Oreo milkshake, you can ask me to do whatever you want whenever you want!” Copper was easy to train, but he started to become defiant in distracting scenarios. Turns out the kibble we were using wasn’t high value enough. As soon as we brought out the good treats he was much easier to train.
Consistency
If there’s more than one human in your household, make sure you are all on the same page for training purposes. It’s hard enough to train a puppy, but if everyone is doing things differently, your puppy will end up confused and everyone will be frustrated. Make sure everyone walks the puppy on the same side of the body (the left is the most common side), uses the same commands (such as “go potty” or “lie down”), uses the same disciplinary terms (such as “No!”), and the same praise (we use “Yes!”).
Biting and Teething
When your puppy play bites, they’re most likely doing it to play and for attention. If they learn that biting gets you to laugh or squeal or act a certain way, they might think it’s great fun. When they bite, say “No!” in a deep voice, immediately stop all play, give them a chew toy and walk away. This teaches them that biting does not get them what they want. If this doesn’t work, you can get them to go into their crate for a time out. However, it is important that when you use the crate in this way, you make sure they don’t realize it is a form of punishment. Be sure to act happy when you put them in there and give them a treat and/or a bone. Play biting is completely normal and will go away with time. What’s very important is to never hit a puppy when they bite, or misbehave. This could make the problem much worse as they could start to bite you whenever your hand gets too close to their face, even when they’re older.
Chew toys that we recommend are Kongs (they’re also just good to put peanut butter in and then allow your puppy something to work at while they’re in their crate), cow femur bones, rope toys, split deer antlers, and nylabones. Puppies need plenty of different textures and materials while they’re teething. Plus, it will hopefully teach them early on that it is more fun to chew on toys rather than furniture.
Potty Training
Puppies need to go out often while they are awake–at least once every hour at first, until you trust them to go longer. When they are not outside, and you are not paying 100% attention to them, you can either put them in their crate, in a playpen, or tether them to you with a long leash so they can’t wander off. In general, dogs are not able to move forward or backward in time to connect their actions to a punishment. For example, if they peed on the carpet and you walk by a minute later and see the pee, it does NO good to punish them. They don’t understand why and it could create confusion. They say you have up to 3 seconds to correct a behavior after it happens. Thus, if your puppy is connected to you, you are more likely to be able to correct the behavior within 3 seconds. Often accidents are more your fault than the dog’s.
That being said, we struggled a lot with Lily. I was convinced she had a UTI and had her urine checked at 9 weeks old because she was peeing 4-5 times outside and then sometimes would have accidents inside within 5 minutes of going outside. Her urinalysis came back normal, so I assumed it was a behavioral issue. Fast forward 2 months and I was still convinced something was wrong, so I had her urine checked again and it was positive for a UTI. Sometimes frequent accidents should point you towards a medical problem. Never hesitate to reach out to your vet or trainer if you are not sure.
If possible, avoid the use of pee pads. This can be very confusing to puppies and we always found that being consistent with taking them outside to go to the bathroom was the best method.
Care and Attention
Please don’t expect your puppy to be in their crate all day. Puppies need lots of attention and shouldn’t be expected to be in their crate for more than a couple hours at a time during the day if possible. If you can, try to work from home, have a neighbor or dog sitter come by several times during the day, or look into doggy day care once they are up to date on vaccines. These dogs are such loving creatures and they become so attached to you. Copper and Lily follow my husband and I around the house, and are always laying at our feet, or on the couch with us. If you think about it, you can leave the house and go see your friends, family, or coworkers. For them, you are it! They don’t just love you, you are their whole world.
Socialization
As soon as you bring them home, you have a 2-3 month window to socialize your puppy. This does not just mean socialize them to people and dogs, but to everything. If you want your dog to be comfortable around certain things, you must expose them to these situations early on. For example, take them in the car with you (make sure you have a harness seat belt), take them on walks, give them baths, brush them, brush their teeth, get a puppy mini groom at 4-5 months old, trim their nails, trim the hair around their eyes and muzzle, play with their paws/ears, expose them to people and dogs (once they are up to date on vaccines) of all ages, shapes, colors and sizes, etc. This is so important. It’s very easy to tell the difference between an adult dog that was socialized well as a puppy and one that was not.
Bathing and Grooming
Get a good shampoo/conditioner, brush and comb, nail clippers, and ear cleaner. We bathe Copper and Lily every 2 weeks or so with paw baths in between. We have had no issues with their skin drying out and in fact I think this contributes to the fact that they rarely have any mats in their hair. We only brush them maybe once or twice per week because of their frequent baths that condition and detangle their hair. Make sure when you brush their hair, you get down to the skin. If you lightly brush their hair, you won’t know that mats are forming down towards the skin. If you’ve ever seen a dog come back from the groomer shaved, this is probably because the owner was not properly brushing their dog.
We have Copper and Lily groomed professionally approximately every 8 weeks. A lot of doodle owners get their dogs groomed more frequently than that, but we like to get them cut short all over and then let their hair grow out in between. We’ve been asked by so many people how we keep them looking like puppies and this is the trick. Head on over to our blog post on grooming for more information.
If your puppy has adorable floppy ears, they can easily trap moisture and start to grow yeast/fungus and get infected. We recommend an ear cleansing solution that you put in their ears at the end of each bath. We’ve done this from a young age and they’ve never had smelly ears. The key is to do this early though—once your pup develops ear infections, it will be really hard to get the smell to go away completely.
Love
Love the heck out of your pup! They will only be small for so long, so take lots of pictures and videos. You will not regret it. I love to look back at memories in my phone and relive those puppy months. Now is the time that you will begin to form that unbreakable bond with your pup, and, though seemingly impossible, your love for them will grow exponentially with time.
