What to Do When You Bring Home a New Puppy

I understand how happy and excited you and other family members are when your house is going to welcome another new member – a puppy. He’s going to play in the yard with you, walk in the local park on the weekend and even a new best friend of your kids.

However, there are a lot of other stuff you need to keep in mind because growing up a puppy is like growing a small child. It will have countless things to learn to handle and get acquainted to. Even your children, they also need to know how to and how not to handle the puppy.

In this article, we will cover everything from supplies and preparation steps to the car ride home, the first few days, how to introduce him or her to your family and more.

Food

Let’s talk about food first!

Chances are your dog came from a breeder or a shelter. Find out what your dog has been eating and get a bag of that dog food. Now, if you do opt to chance the kind of dog food that your furry is eating. Face it in over a period of about two weeks. Gradually, phasing in more of the dog food of your choice.

That’s because if you change your puppy’s food all one time, you are likely to upset their stomach.

Dog crate

Did you know that the biggest mistake new puppy parents make is giving their puppy too much freedom way to early on? Don’t make that mistake, a dog crate, a puppy playpen and baby gates are fantastic because they help you to control your dog’s environment – an extremely important thing with a new dog and they are great for potty training.

Leash and harness

Having a safe place for your dog to hang out when you can’t supervise and having them on leash are the ideal way to your dog out of trouble. I highly recommend to using a nylon leash if possible so that you always have one that’s convenient.

Nylon leashes are especially nice because you can wash them pretty easily and remember your dog is going to need to be leashed pretty much full time.

Remove potentially dangerous stuff out of your dog’s vision

Help you proof your house before your dog comes home and make sure he doesn’t have access to anything potentially dangerous like electrical cords – those are a favorite chew toy of many puppies. Do the obvious things like keeping garbage cans and houseplants away from your dog and where they don’t have access to them, keep cleaners and chemicals secured behind cabinets, too. Generally, do a good once-over your house, make sure there’s nothing too small or something that they could access that would potentially injure them.

My tip of this is bending down on your knees to decrease your height to as close as your dog’s to get the same vision as him/her while walking around to easily find out unwanted stuff.

Do your best to see your house from your puppy’s point of view. Remember that they are very curious and they will quickly find anything that you are missed or that they can possibly put in their mouth or play with.

But don’t worry in a minute, I’ll give you some advice on chewing training rewards and more.

Now, what about dog bowls?

Well, I recommend that you get several dog bowls that way you can wash them and swap them out every single day and always have a clean bowl.

I think stainless steel bowls are a little bit better than plastic because they are easier to clean and your dog is also a lot less likely to chew these up.

He will need a collar also to put your dog’s ID tags and rabies tags on and be sure to include your phone number and address on your dog’s ID tag.

It’s a good idea to have a harness as well. Puppies like this especially are growing and developing so, you want a way to easily supervise them and walk them and the harness is probably the safest way to do that for a young dog.

Toys

There are two main types of toys that you will need to get for your dog, especially if you have a puppy. There are two toys: one that looks like real thing such as bones that are specifically designed for dogs to chew on and the another is training toy, like balls, frisbees, tug toys and anything else your dog really loves.

Most people don’t understand between these two types of toys but it’s actually very simple. Leaving out chew toys is fine but don’t leaving training ones lying around for your dog to just investigate. You need to keep these toys really special because when you are able to just bring these out for training, you are in a position to keep them really exciting and really interesting to a dog.

Keep away is a nice way to ignite interest in a new toy quick let him win every once in a while, to make sure that he doesn’t get too frustrated. Toys like this are so important because you can’t really keep their attention and tug of war is really sadist most dog. So, you can use that to motivate them like sit, lie down, roll over.

Food isn’t the only thing that you need to reward with. Get a variety of different toys so that you can experiment and figure out which ones your dog really loves playing with.

And it’s normal for your dog to be interested in one toy at one moment and another toy at a different moment. For example, you know a little while ago, your dog is interested on a Yoda toy but now, he’s into a tennis ball. Don’t give up on a toy because they are not in the mood for that particular toy at that moment. Does it make sense?

For some older dogs and especially puppies, it’s important to have a lot of different chew toys. For example, sometimes the dog is in the mood for something really hard and then, other times, they are into something that is kind of in between like the plastic bone and the rest of time, they prefer something soft.

It’s a good idea for chew toys to be pretty oversized to much better to be too big rather than too small. Just make sure that they don’t splinter or break and if they do, get rid of them.

If you want to know more about dog toys, don’t hesitate to take a peek at these articles:

How to choose the best dog toys?
Best dog toys out there on the market

Dog bed?

You want to have a cozy place for you dog to sleep and hang out but young puppies will likely destroy a normal dog bed if you just give them access to it if they haven’t been taught properly yet. Old towels and a blanket are really good alternatives to a dog beds because they are cheaper and easier to clean and usually, less tempting for a dog to chew up.

Once your puppies are a little bit growing up, and he/she has been trained completely, buy him a new dog bedding doesn’t seem too late, right?

Growing a puppy is never easy, especially if you’re a newcomer. However, it’s not kind of an impossible mission because you have us by your side. We will give you some more guidance to take care of as well as train him/her. Consult these articles: