As soon as your puppy comes home in the first week, you should start to bond with them and teach them how to fit into your lifestyle and their new environment.
Other than all the other common tips, such as teaching a puppy to use pads, sit command, stay command, and leash training.
Here are some simple tips that people don’t usually think about when taking care of a brand new puppy. These efficient yet straightforward things to do with your dog will help them when they are older, and you can start in the first week.
Puppies grow up so fast that you need to desensitise them when young to environments or obstacles you expect them to encounter when older.
Most people take time off work when they get a new puppy. I did and along with the usual bonding, toilet training and gentle basic commands, like sit, stay, and so you can also do these simple exercises with your puppy. Use your time off work to its best potential when you have a puppy.
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My Simple Puppy Daily Tips That Will Make a Huge Difference When They grow Up.
Can avoid adult dog issues such as firework anxiety, separation anxiety, food obsession, and fear of going on car journeys.
Alone Time
Leave your puppy on its own every day for at least twenty minutes. It may be hard to leave them and break the cycle of cuddling or playing with them during the daylight.
But doing this will help you and your dog in the future to avoid separation anxiety.
It will help a dog get accustomed to being on its own when you are in the house and need to be away from them.
For instance, you have a plumber and need to keep your dog away, but you are still in the house.
An older dog that’s not be trained will bark and bark. A dog that has been prepared from an early age is used to being alone and is desensitised when in situations like this.
Sound Therapy
Play sounds like lightning and thunder, car horns, children playing, and firework noises to your new puppy in the first week on very low volume.
You can find many sounds to play to your dog that could be around your environment. Start very low and increase the volume over the coming days.
Environmental Sounds To Desensitise A Puppy – VIDEO
The trick is not to scare them but to get your puppy accustomed to the type of noises you expect them to hear where you live.
If you have your new puppy now and it’s wintertime, be sure to play children playing sounds and general outside summer sounds.
Because by the time summer comes, your dog will be older, and the noises will be unknown to them.
The windows will be open in the summer, creating even more sensory overload.
The above can also help with the back-off barkers, dogs that bark at sounds as they aren’t sure what they are and have never heard them before.
Vehicle Desensitisation
Work on taking your dog in the car even if you dont drive anywhere. Take a toy with you and some treats to get them used to the car and that it’s a happy place and not a place to be anxious.
Hand Feeding
Hand-feeding your puppy is very important because before they were with their brother and sisters, it’s pretty much a free for all and every puppy for themselves.
You can generally tell which puppy is the strongest and the most domineering as they are usually the chubbiest!
Puppies have zero control when food is in the mix—That’s how the fittest and the strongest survive in the wild.
A puppy does not share!
Puppies will climb over siblings to get food and follow their mum like shadows, hoping for food.
You are teaching them some self-control and manners by hand feeding your puppy one of their meals while showing leadership with positivity.
How To Hand Feed
Hold your hand out with some kibble on and if they dive-bomb you for it, close your hand.
Keep repeating this until they understand that they will only get food if they are controlled, gentle and waiting for some kind of command from you.
You can use commands, wait, stay, or gentle, followed by a command such as go or break when you want them to take the food.
Either way or whatever commands you use, you teach your puppy self-control and show exemplary leadership.
Be sure to give them the go-ahead command the minute they relax and wait patiently.
