New Puppy? What You Need to Know!

Body care.

This includes everything from toilet training to grooming.

It’s crucial to ensure a puppy has plenty and appropriate opportunities to eliminate. Dogs are not born knowing they are supposed to only toilet outside and in designated areas, so it’s our job to teach them where to eliminate.

Puppies cannot control their bladders, and they will need frequent toilet breaks throughout the day and during the night as well. Although the time between breaks can be stretched as the puppy grows older, at the very beginning, we want to give them the chance to eliminate VERY frequently.

For some, this might mean every 30/60 minutes.

It’s also important to take a puppy out after any activity such as playing, eating, drinking, or waking up from a nap.

Handling and engaging in grooming activities such as nail clipping and brushing from a young age will also help our puppies feel more comfortable with these procedures as they grow older.

Learning about cooperative care techniques can help you introduce handling and grooming in a positive way to your puppy so that they can learn to enjoy the process rather than become scared.

This will help keep their coat, skin, teeth, ears, and paws healthy, prevent matting, and enable you to detect sensitivity, and early signs of pain and discomfort, as you will learn to observe and recognise what is normal and what is not normal for your dog.

Furthermore, physical touch causes a release of oxytocin, sometimes called the feel-good hormone, that plays a role in bonding and building trust.

Healthy gut.

Gut microbiome health impacts several other areas of our bodies. Indeed, the microorganisms in the digestive system can affect overall health – and an individual’s behaviour too.

The composition of the intestinal microbiota is influenced by many factors, including mode of birth (vaginal vs cesarean), early feeding (breastfeeding vs formula), and how the weaning is done.

A responsible breeder should consider all the above and adopt processes that allow normal gut development.

This is why getting a puppy from a reputable and responsible breeder is extremely important. Indeed, whatever the breeder does (or does not do) during those critical first weeks of the puppies’ life will play a huge role in their growth and physical, psychological and emotional development.

When choosing your puppy’s diet, a good idea is to consult a qualified nutritionist to help you select the best option for you and your pup. With so many foods and so much information available on the market, it can be hard to make an informed decision, and getting the help of a professional is always sensible.

Besides choosing an appropriate diet, providing the puppy with good variety (including how the food is presented) and chewing opportunities is also essential.

There are a lot of natural chews available on the market, and I would advise heading to your local pet store to get a good selection of them.

I recommend getting natural and long-lasting chews that are appropriate for your puppy’s age and size, and I would avoid things like raw hides and highly processed chewing sticks. Make sure you include lots of different textures and consistencies (just make sure they are not too hard for your pup) to keep it varied and interesting and identify what your puppy loves.

Chewing is a normal dog behaviour, and it’s important to give our dogs plenty of appropriate opportunities to chew, as the more they can chew their things, the less likely they are to chew ours.

Be aware that you must implement some management to prevent unwanted chewing, like keeping items you care about or anything that might be dangerous out of reach.

Remember NEVER to punish your puppy for unwanted chewing, and NEVER take anything away from them. If you need to remove something, always trade it for something else (treats work wonders for this) to avoid conflict and developing guarding behaviours down the line.

You can also think about teaching a ‘leave’ and a ‘drop’ cue to help with that!

Again, working with a trainer can really help you set everything up for success from the very start and avoid the most common problems people tend to encounter during those first few weeks of puppy life.

Play, exploration and socialisation opportunities!

Puppies need to play to become healthy, well-balanced, and happy adult dogs.

Indeed, playing with mums and littermates from an early stage allows puppies to learn and practice behaviours and everyday life skills such as how to use their mouth and bodies (remember when we talked about the importance of developing motor lateralisation, balance, and fitness?) and how to read other dogs’ body language.

Positive play interactions between puppies and humans are also essential, as they constitute a great bonding and confidence-boosting activity.

This said we need to be mindful about how we play with our puppies and think about what we are teaching them, what they are actually learning, and how what we do now can affect their future behaviour.

Repetitive ball throwing can, for example, teach our puppies to focus on moving objects, potentially leading to them becoming obsessed with all things moving when out and about. The more they practise this as young puppies, the more likely they will engage in this behaviour when they get older.

This is not to say you should never play with a ball, but working on building value in your relationship and your puppy’s ability to focus on you, is equally (if not even more) important.

We also need to be careful of letting puppies engage in fast-paced and repetitive movements such as chasing and catching objects when they are really young, as this can not only pose a risk to their joints (see above, when we talked about the importance of the type of exercise we provide!), but also teach them specific behaviour patterns that we might not want them to rehearse as they become adults (e.g., chasing moving items or other animals; engaging in fast-pace and high arousal activities).

Don’t forget that the more your puppy practises a behaviour, the better they get at it!

Exploration and socialisation are also essential to help puppies become healthy, happy, and well-balanced adult dogs.

Dogs are a social species; they are inquisitive by nature and love to explore.

Providing puppies with plenty of safe and appropriate opportunities to explore and get used to different environments and all the things they might encounter throughout their life is essential to their development. And the same can be said of giving puppies the chance to get used to other people, dogs, and different animals too.

Don’t forget that you want these interactions to be positive and tailored to your puppy’s needs and personality. Whenever in doubt, play it safe. A missed interaction is better than a bad one, and the main goal is always to keep your puppy happy and safe.