Brought Bailey home today. Less prepared than I should be.
Bringing a new puppy home is a bit like going to war. I don't mean this in an aggressive way (OK, maybe I do, a little) but in a nutshell, one can never be too prepared, it's all about the terrain (your home turf), and strategic planning is the essence of success.
I don't think I've ever seen any free doggy advice site say this, actually not even the paid ones, but having now come out, battle-weary and a survivor of not one but two puppies, I can honestly say this is true. I envy the domestic goddess puppy keepers that look like Nigella, have perfect puppies and are stay home mums. I'm not a stay home mum, I risk getting criticized for leaving my dogs at home alone with no one (what's each other then?) for company while I work full-time, and I still love dogs and love what they bring to my life when I'm home with them.
But yes, before you bring your puppy home, preparation is the mother of success. And no, you can
never be too prepared.
Here's some of the decisions I'd wish I'd made before Bailey came home:
A decision on where the puppy is going to spend the majority of their time when I am not able to supervise, train or play with my puppy.While this sounds simple at first glance, thinking through this deeper, it's not as easy as it seems. For one, no site seems to tell you exactly
how much space to give your dog so that you're neither being cruel to the pet, nor giving it the equivalent of a playboy mansion when you take it home. For another, a recent search showed that many sites favoured crate training, and demonstrated how to pick the right size for a crate, but not the puppy's play area/territory.
I came up with an easy rule of thumb that worked for me: Imagine a rectangle area, simple length (L) x width (W) on the ground. Find out the length of your puppy as an adult dog. Look up websites or ask the breeder if you're not sure how large typical dogs of the breed grow to. For mixed breeds, assume the larger of the mix until you can be sure. (
Editor's note that typically, websites tend to tell you the height of the dog, and not the length. I'm no da Vinci but I reckon that a dog can't be more than 3 times longer than it is tall, so went with the proportions of height multiplied by 3.) L = length of your adult dog multiplied by 3, and W = length of your adult dog multiplied by 2. For most people with a medium sized dog, this would be the space of a large bathroom or a small kitchen.
The first impression you may have is that this space isn't all that big. You're right, but this isn't going to be the place that your dog gets free run of in the house for the rest of it's life - that would be cruel. This is the place where your puppy will spend any
unsupervised time, and should therefore (by calculations above) be large enough to hold a bed, water and food bowls, toilet facilities and toys.
Once the decision is made, ensure that you have easy access to it, and that it's puppy proof (nothing chewable, toxic, dangerous, sharp, swallowable and otherwise unsuitable for a young dog). Also, if possible, ensure that puppy is able to walk into it by himself, rather than you needing to carry him into it all the time (helps tons with training later on). Finally, make sure puppy doesn't get the ability to wander from this designated zone once he's in it. This is where puppy pens, baby gates and other makeshift fencing that makes your house look like a miniature version of the Israeli-Palestinian border come in. Stick with it though, this will be puppy's home for the next few months until he's old enough to be trusted on his own around the house (usually when he's 8 months to 1 year old).
One thing I didn't mention was physical
height. Assume puppy's going to jump, at least at the onset, and have Height = Length of adult dog. This is to account for dogs leaning on gate while standing on hind legs, jumping dogs, dogs that take a flying leap etc etc. I'm fortunate for my Westies that a baby gate that came up to the height of my waist sufficed, but then again, Westies don't grow that tall. This is another reason why it makes sense to have an arrangement where the puppy can walk in by himself. Suddenly picking up 8 month old German Shepherd isn't quite so easy anymore...
A decision on whether I was going to crate-train or paper train Bailey.The last time I did research on toilet training puppies, many sites seemed to favour paper-training as the "matter of course" in training younglings. Over the last 4 years, this seems to have shifted in favour of crate training, and I've now tried both, with pros and cons either way. Pick one, and stick with it to avoid confusing the puppy who is likely to be as confused as a human having been permanently abducted by aliens.
Crate TrainingThe very popular method of house training a dog which comprises getting a small crate for the puppy, just large enough for the puppy to lie down, sit up, stand and turn around in. The puppy is taken directly to the designated toilet zone when he is out of the crate at regular intervals to eliminate and praised heavily when he does the right job in the zone.
Pros:- Teaches your dog bladder control, which is useful if the final arrangement for the puppy is to end up doing all of their business outdoors on walks.
- Easier for most dogs (with exception of puppy mill dogs) to figure out, as it's apparently doggy instinct not to dirty where they sleep.
- Makes it easier to manage puppy's time, as a puppy in a crate without much space to do anything won't. If done right, your dog falls into a routine much faster than a puppy that isn't crate trained.
- Added advantage of teaching puppies to settle in a confined area, making travel and temporary confinement in the future acceptable to dogs.
- Faster to accomplish, dogs take within a week to get the hang of this if done right.
- A schedule can be set up at timed and planned intervals, instead of just whenever puppy feels like it.
- Because of the predictability and bladder controls, eliminating on command is easier with crate training.
Cons:- The keyword in the first benefit is the word "all". You have to really be committed to taking your dog out to do its business outdoors, come rain or shine or frost. This also usually means around the same time every day that your dog is used to. And no, dogs don't understand weekends too well.
- Puppies need a lot of trips outdoors on doggy duty. For puppies under 3 months of age, this is once every hour at least. Again, puppies don't understand night/day very well either, so that means midnight trips to the loo outdoors for at least the first 2-3 weeks.
- Messing up (literally) with the crate can mean that the doggy instinct of not messing where they sleep is over-ridden. This is by no means set in stone, and depending on the puppy, this could be one mess, 3 messes, 15 messes, and very rarely, never. That's a margin of error that you have to bear in mind and live with if you mess up or forget the time.
- All of the above points basically point to crate training being nearly impossible for a dog owner working full time, unless you're working full time in the sort of company that gives you maternity cover when you get a new puppy.
Paper TrainingThis is the main alternative to crate training. There are variants to paper training so this doesn't always mean paper, but the method all essentially involves placing newspaper or pee absorbent material all over the puppy zone. Feed the puppy strategically on one side only, near where the bed is placed, and the puppy usually wanders over to the other side away from the bed/food to eliminate. This leverages the idea that dogs tend to pick the same spots for future elimination, and trains the puppy's surface preferences on paper/pee pads etc.
Pros:- Puppies use in their own time, so you're less on a fixed schedule in having to watch the puppy like a hawk to determine when they need to go.
- This is the preferred method for owners who have to work or be away longer hours, as it offers more flexibility in making sure the puppy has facilities to use.
- As they become more reliable on the surface/paper, a change in the positioning of the toilet can be effected. If you'd like to progress your puppy to an indoor litter tray, grass in the yard etc. just move a soiled paper to where you want your puppy to go, and the puppy tends to follow. This method was used in Singapore to train their dogs to use an actual squatting loo that was set into the ground. All the owners needed to do was flush when their dogs were done.
- Smell attractant pads and puppy training solutions on newspapers do help in rigging the odds to your favour that puppies eliminate on paper to speed up the process.
- This method is not cruel to dogs, neither requiring them to perform on demand, nor requiring them to hold it until their owners come home. Many dogs end up eliminating more or less on a schedule anyway when they grow older as their digestive systems settle around their feeding times, so this method doesn't prevent you from eventually training your dog to do it outside.
- Allows dogs to be toilet trained indoors, which is convenient for flat dwellers or people who don't have easy, quick access to the outdoors.
Cons:- Training in this method takes longer, as it relies more on coincidence than sheer willpower. While there are ways to stack the odds in your favour, nothing works 100% all the time.
- The biggest drawback to this method is the fact that puppies tend to shred or play with the newspapers when they are bored (it's fun!), ending up in one very dirty puppy and also a very dirty play pen. While there are ways around this (eg. putting the papers in a little tray away from your puppy's reach, redirection etc.) no single method is foolproof and much relies on your puppy already knowing a specific area to use. I have found that puppies from ages 8-10 weeks tend not to know/learn how to play with papers yet. As they become older and more exploratory, they inevitably figure out that newspapers are incredibly fun to shred. So note to self that if this method is chosen, get the preferred zone figured out by the puppy within those 2 weeks!
- I did see one other drawback mentioned on a site that said if you had a habit of reading your newspapers on the floor, your dogs not knowing the difference between today's news and yesterday's news may end up doing their business on a section you haven't read yet. Never happened to me, but the simple solution is to lay your papers out on the coffee table, or read the news online.
A decision about how often and when I was going to give Bailey her meals.This decision is by far the hardest one, and also the one most fraught with advice from all corners. Puppies from 8 - 12 weeks typically need 3 meals a day, progressing from 12 weeks to adulthood on 2 meals per day with bigger portions.
The most important consideration is that what goes in, must come out - and that said, would be preferred not to come out at the odd hours of the morning. What they don't tell you is that when your puppy eats, aside from the obvious, also determines your puppy's waking (playful) hours. In the first few weeks, I scheduled a 24 hours divided by 3 = once every 8 hour routine.
Big, big mistake. Bailey ended up being bouncy and playful starting at 1am in the morning, resulting in a bedside siege every morning in the hours of 1am-3am by a 1.5kg white furball.
More research later, I decided on a 3 meal schedule as follows...
8am: Breakfast with the dogs, feed Bailey as Beanie got breakfast.
1pm: Lunch for Bailey while Beanie got a treat to avoid jealousy.
7pm: Dinner with the dogs, feed Bailey while Beanie got dinner.
The tip of removing water and treats 3-4 hours before bed time also worked wonders in ensuring that puppy didn't wake up in the middle of the night to do their jobs, hence allowing me to let the puppy sleep through the night without waking me up for a night time play time.
A decision about where Bailey was going to sleep during the night.I got Beanie, my first dog a lot older than Bailey, who was 7.5 weeks when I took her home, so I'd expected Bailey to adjust as well as Beanie could, not knowing better. I'd left Bailey on the first night downstairs with Beanie, in separate crates so Beanie didn't have to cuddle up next to some stranger.
Well, it was an hour in the car from Buckinghamshire in the middle of winter for Bailey, and must have felt like being abducted by well meaning aliens into outer space in a weird space ship, landing in what seemed like an eternity later on an alien home planet. Bailey slept all the way through, tired out by the experience, but the first night, realised the permanence of her alien abduction situation after seeing another fellow doggy in captivity from an earlier abduction, imagined the worst and whined and cried herself to sleep.
Points for making sure Beanie didn't get disturbed by a stranger: FAIL.
Points for making sure Bailey had a good experience at home: FAIL.
Points for attempting not to create a clingy dog who clearly felt abandoned and didn't trust humans: FAIL.
Next night, upstairs next to my bed. The following week, I gradually increased the distance of her sleeping crate to my bed, and the following week, further away, until finally she was reassured that I was still going to be around the next morning and she'd get fed, same time, same channel.
Some websites talk about ignoring your puppy when they whine and cry for attention, believing that if this attention was paid any mind, that this develops a clingy, attention seeking dog. Suspend that for the first few days I think now. Contrary to paranoid behaviouralists, your puppy simply won't know enough about how you're going to behave in the first week to manipulate your behaviour by whining. As it is, you know little enough about your puppy to manipulate its behaviour, much less the other way around. After your puppy settles in (a week or two later, perhaps), continuing this treatment may give rise to attention seeking, which will quickly die down with ignorance.
I'd thought to let my puppy learn that making a noise won't ever get me to turn up, by way of hoping that when the puppy is young without a developed bark, it is far preferable that the puppy never learnt to bark at all. Little did I know anyway that a puppy's bark, despite all best intentions, develop anyway, and sound very different from a whine and a cry!
