Puppy 101

Puppy 101 for Helping Your Pup Transition Into Their New Home

Have you heard the news?

There’s a new puppy in town!

One thing we can all agree on is this: Puppies are the cutest.

You can find them napping on (and sometimes in!) their water bowl. They are obsessed with pine cones to sharpen their cute little puppy teeth. And don’t even get us started on how adorable it is when their heads haven’t grown at the same rate as their giant paws. Or how stinky – yet completely captivating –their puppy breath can get.

As cute as puppies can be, they can also be a lot of work. These darling little bundles of joy come in all shapes and sizes during the first few months of their lives, but they can grow to be as tiny as their feline friends or as large as a pony.

So let’s talk about the do’s and don’ts of Puppyhood 101.

DO Your Research Before Getting Your Next Pup

Hopefully, you did your homework to be sure the size and breed of dog will fit into your family’s lifestyle. Researching how your new little friend will fit into your daily life is an important part of expanding your family.

What energy levels will my puppy have as a full-grown adult dog? How many walks will he/she need each day? Am I going to need to get up before sunrise to take Fido on an hour-long walk each morning before I go to work?

All of these questions are great starting points for conducting your research for getting a new pup.

If you forgot to do your homework (or your dog ate it), you can adapt to your puppy’s drive – or lack thereof – and still make it work by training the puppy and the family.  Let’s look at the key puppy 101 lessons such as potty training a pup, good dog toys, and obedience training for puppies.

DO Get Your Puppy on a Schedule

If you ask your puppy for a copy of their daily schedule, it would probably look a little something like this:

“Eat. Sleep. Chew. Naptime. Potty. Snooze again. Rinse & Repeat.”

While this may take up the bulk of their day, making a schedule is the key to success in helping your puppy and the rest of the family members ease into these new routines. Creating a schedule also helps the puppy feel more secure in their new home, which will help other areas of puppy life, such as training routines.

The most important schedule is probably the potty schedule. Puppies should go out immediately upon waking in the morning and after napping. Another popular puppy potty time is 15 minutes or so after eating or drinking. They will usually show you by sniffing around, circling or just looking lost. If you’re looking for a timeline, the AKC suggests puppies go out every two hours.

It is usually best to carry the half-asleep puppy to the grass and sit them down. Most of the time this results in an immediate waterfall, so you and your pup are free to go back inside for some much-needed puppy playtime. Always remember not to play with them until they potty. If you reward your pup with playtime after they potty, this will help to reinforce the need to take care of business before enjoying a game of fetch.

If you use treats for potty training, make sure it is a treat your puppy is head over paws for and is only used for potty training. This helps them work hard at pottying outside and keeping indoor accidents to a minimum.

Here are a few of our favorite puppy treats:

Stella and Chewy Treats can be cut or torn into smaller pieces for training. They are great for puppies as nutritionally satisfying as well as yummy!

Acana makes a great freeze-dried treat that is protein rich and crumbles easily. You can break it into smaller pieces in your hand.

Both of these above treats are high value, and if broken up, won’t fill them up when used for training.

As we said before, key potty times are after waking from naps and overnight, as well as 15 minutes – give or take – after eating. Watch your puppy’s behaviors after eating – such as sniffing the ground, circling, whining, and looking like they’ve lost their favorite toy. This may be their way of communicating to you that it’s time to go back outside for another potty break.

DO Schedule Meal Times for Your Puppy

Up next in Puppy 101 is your puppy’s mealtime schedule.

But first, let’s talk about the best food for puppies. 

Choose a corn-free and wheat-free puppy food made by a reputable dog food company. Make sure the puppy food you select is made for your puppy’s size. (You can find size and weight charts on the back of puppy food bags or the company’s website.)  

Fromm Family Dog Food is one of our favorites due to the quality ingredients, quality control, and commitment to customer (and puppy!) satisfaction. Fromm has various types of puppy food for different diets and different puppy sizes.

The right puppy food is important for your puppy’s growth. Smaller breed puppies grow at a slower rate, which means they need more calories throughout the day in smaller meals. Large dogs will need to grow slower to avoid “knuckling”, a condition where the bone grows faster than the muscles or tendons in the legs.

All puppies need lunch for the first few months of their lives to keep their blood sugar stable and to avoid large amounts at each meal.  We recommend feeding breakfast, lunch, and dinner until the puppy is 12-16 weeks old, dividing the daily portion for your puppy’s breed in three equal meals. 

We also strongly recommend that you ask your puppy to sit before placing the bowl on the floor, which is a beginning step in obedience training for puppies.

Give your puppy 15 minutes with their bowl.  If they have not eaten all of their food, pick it up and put it away until the next meal. 

This is best for two reasons.

1. You could be overfeeding your dog if they are consistently leaving food.

2. Leaving the bowl of food down encourages grazing instead of eating meals, which is a habit we do not encourage, especially if other pets are present in the home. 

Try to keep treats for training purposes only. Too many treats will fill a puppy’s little tummy up, as well as make treats not as effective for training.

DO Crate Train Your Puppy

Crate training is a MUST for a puppy. Crates create a safe haven or den for dogs. With proper training, crates can provide comfort in difficult encounters, such as a puppy experiencing anxiety during a thunderstorm or when your puppy feels overstimulated.

In addition to creating a safe space for your new pup, they are a great training tool.

Puppies should be in a crate when not being watched 24/7, such as when you are asleep, away from the house or busy doing chores and cannot provide the puppy supervision they need and deserve. When you put them into their crate, give your four-legged friend a safe chew toy such as a Kong for puppies stuffed with their lunch or indestructible West Paw toys. 

Head over to your local mom-and-pop retail pet supply store to shop the best puppy toys.  Avoid using anything your pup can easily destroy by chewing, like towels or dog beds when crate training.

Puppies may whine, howl, or dig to convince you to let them out of their crate. 

DO NOT let your pup out unless they have been quiet for 5 minutes or more. If you open the crate door when they are exhibiting bad behavior, you have just rewarded the bad behavior and communicated to them that you will open the door when they whine or exhibit unwanted behavior.

Puppies learn very quickly that they like their crate, especially if you have some crate-only toys. By having crate-only toys, your puppy will learn to self-soothe with these toys and reinforce that the crate is your puppy’s “safe space”. Crate-training also makes potty training much easier by setting a training foundation for your pup.

DO OBEDIENCE TRAINING FOR GOOD PUPPY BEHAVIOR

Around 7-8 weeks old, your puppy can begin obedience training. Obedience training starts with commands such as “sit” and “stay”, as well as learning the basics of crate training.

Obedience training also helps your pup develop a stronger bond with you, which means he/she will be more compliant to your commands when the bond deepens.

With proper obedience training, your pup will learn that you have their best interest in mind, so if they happen to break free from their leash or find a tasty treat they shouldn’t consume, they will obey your commands to help keep them safe.

DON’T STRESS OUT ABOUT THE PUPPY YEARS

A new puppy can be a lot of work, but it can also be fun, exciting, and rewarding to add a furry-legged member to the family.

Don’t give up! Doing your best to keep a schedule and incorporate training will help your puppy grow into a well-behaved dog.

So, we have a schedule, potty training basics, an overview of puppy food, and crate training.

Keep an eye out for our blog about basic obedience training for puppies that can be done with your day- to-day routine.  

Annette Clark

Certified Pet Nutritionist, Pet Allergy Specialist, Master Groomer

Private Consultation: 

Contact – Naturally Holistic Pets