Congratulations you on the new addition to your family!
Help Your Puppy Get The Best Start
Regular veterinary care plays an important role in helping your puppy grow into a healthy adult. Vaccinations protect against serious diseases, while regular deworming and flea and tick prevention help guard against common parasites. Ongoing dental care supports lifelong comfort and health, and annual wellness exams allow our team to monitor development and address concerns early. For more details on each of these topics, please visit the other client information sections on our website.
Socialization & Training Your Puppy
It is so important to bring up your new puppy in a healthy and loving environment. Training and socialization can be very fun and rewarding for both you and your puppy. Puppies have an amazing capacity to learn complex demands quickly puppy classes are great for this. Here are a few points to remember:
- Start training immediately. Puppies learn rapidly but have a short attention span, so spend at least 10 minutes twice daily.
- Conduct training when the environment is quiet and the puppy is not excited. Once the puppy has learned a response in one environment, move to a more complex environment.
- Learning occurs more rapidly if one person trains the puppy first and then the other family members get involved.
- Use simple, one word commands like “come”, “sit”, “down” and “heel”.
- Reward appropriate behaviour within ½ second after giving the command. Valued rewards include food, touch and praise every time your puppy responds to a command. Once the response is learned, only reward intermittently.
- If the puppy fails at any level of training, stop, don’t reward and start the training again at a simpler level.
- Be patient, never punish. The opposite of a reward is no reward, not punishment. A punishment which causes pain or excitement does not work and generally causes problems. Punishment may also interfere with the owner-animal bond. If the puppy is doing something wrong, distract it or use a reward for responding to a command which is incompatible with the unwanted behaviour.
HOUSE TRAINING:
- Take the puppy outside (on a leash) and praise the puppy when he relieves himself.
- Take the puppy to the same area of the yard for bathroom purposes each time.
- Once he starts to urinate or defecate, quietly praise him with words like “good go pee”. Once he finishes, give him more elaborate praise and a treat. He will gradually learn the meaning of the words “go pee”. Repeating these words while waiting for him to relieve himself is not helpful, and may confuse the puppy.
- Give the puppy approximately 10 minutes to relieve himself. Do not form the habit of waiting 20-30 minutes for the puppy to eliminate. After he is consistently relieving himself within 10 minutes, gradually over a period of several weeks shorten the time span to 5 minutes.
- Once he does relieve himself, play with him outside for a short while (weather and time of day permitting). Taking him inside each time right after he urinates can inadvertently teach him to hold it in, as going indoors might mean the end of his play session with you.
- Do not reprimand the puppy for failing to relieve himself.
- Have the puppy on a schedule for his meals, play and outdoor session.
- Feed the puppy each day in 3 meals by leaving the food out for 10 minutes each time. Pick up any food left after this time is up. Do not leave food down all day for him to nibble on. Continual input leads to continual output! If the puppy is fed on a schedule 7 days a week, his bowel movements will become very predictable.
HIGH QUALITY FOODS PRODUCE MUCH LESS STOOLS. You get what you pay for in dog food. High quality foods are priced higher because they have much better quality (and digestible) ingredients. Cheaper foods use poorer quality ingredients, which are much less digestible and therefore produce more stools.
TAKE THE PUPPY OUTSIDE AFTER:
- Each meal
- Anytime he drinks water
- When he wakes up in the morning or from a nap
- When he plays hard, gets excited, or chews hard on his toys
- When he has a scheduled break
- When he gives you “intention signals” by CIRCLING or SNIFFING.
Pick the puppy up and carry him outside if he is small. Do not rush at the puppy and frighten him – simply get him outside as quickly and calmly as possible. In general, a puppy can hold his urine for his age in months plus 1 hour: so a 2 month old puppy will need to go outside every 3 hours at least. While playing actively, it is not unusual for a puppy to urinate every 20-30 minutes.
IF THE PUPPY HAS AN “ACCIDENT” IN THE HOUSE:
- Simply clean it up and move on. Unless you catch the puppy in the act of urinating or defecating inside the house, there is no benefit to reprimanding or punishing him. Doing so will just teach the puppy to be afraid of you. If you do catch him in the act, say a firm “NO!” and carry him outdoors.
- Clean up the mess thoroughly using an odour neutralizer.
- If the puppy urinates submissively (as he wiggles as he greets you or as he is being punished for misbehavior), do not punish him because he cannot control that behavior. Most dogs will outgrow this as they mature.
CONFINMENT TRAINING:
A crate or an X pen is an ideal place for a young puppy to be confined overnight, or during the day when you are not at home. Dogs have a den instinct – the crate is a quiet, comfortable place for them. Puppies will not soil where they sleep, so the right-sized crate will help housetraining, as well as keeping them safe from household hazards.
Introduce the puppy to the crate as soon as it is brought home. The cage should be left open so that the puppy can voluntarily enter the cage for food, water, toys, or shelter. By making all cage experiences pleasant, the puppy should feel secure and comfortable in its cage. For the crate to remain a positive enjoyable retreat, the dog should never be placed in the cage for punishment. If social isolation or “time-out” techniques are used for punishment, an area such as a washroom, laundry room, or basement might work best.
The ideal crate size is one that is big enough for the puppy to sit, turn around and lie down in. For practical purposes, many people will purchase a crate that is suitable for the adult size of their dog, and then modify it by placing a large cardboard box or other barrier to reduce the size of space for a puppy. If the puppy has too much space inside the crate, he may use one side of it as a bathroom and the other as a bed.
Do not give any food for 2 hours before bedtime or water for 1 hour before bedtime or before you leave the house. Take the puppy outside for a break just before putting him in the crate. It is best to remove all collars & halters to avoid injury. Show no attention to the puppy once he is in the crate. Any attention you show (even yelling at him) simply tells the puppy that if he whines or cries, you will show him more attention. Later, after the puppy is thoroughly trained, many people will simply leave the door of the crate open (or even take the top of the crate off) and use this as the permanent bed for the puppy. Puppies are social animals; the best place for the crate is in the same room as you.