강아지의 집에서의 첫날과 밤을 위한 필수 정보 #70

has started on. I'm going to say it one more time. The best possible food that you can afford. I promise you that doesn't come from a big box store. It doesn't come from a grocery store. It will come from a higher end dog pet store and possibly other outlet, a boutique kind of a place. So, I personally feed all of my dogs raw. They start on raw as soon as they come home. The most important thing is when you look at the ingredients, be aware. Dogs don't need corn. They want, number one, ingredient should be a meat source. I personally feed my dogs seven different protein sources. So, we rotate through different protein sources. I just think that's good for the dogs. Okay. So, you want to plan when you are going to get this puppy that you will be home ideally for two to three days at a minimum that you can help that puppy adjust to the new life in your home. You don't want the puppy to come home and then you say, okay, there's the remote to the TV and now I got to go to work. I'll see ya. Remember I said puppies can learn bad things just as quick as they can learn good things. Yeah. You don't want that to happen. We're going to be intentional, right? So, the goal, we want our puppy to be mentally and physically healthy. We want that puppy to grow up with an abundance of confidence and have the best relationship possible with you and other members of the house. And so, we're going to do that by creating positive associations for that puppy with the things that we want them to have positive associations with. For example, if you aren't going to be intentional about that, but there's another dog in the house, the puppy will have positive associations with following everything that other dog does. And you will be second in line for them to listen to. They might get positive associations with chasing rabbits and squirrels and cats and barking at people and passing on the street and all sorts of things. We want to be intentional about making things happen for the puppy that's going to have them have their best life possible. Now, it all starts with you repeating this line over and over and over to yourself. My puppy is doing the best he can with the very limited education he has so far in the environment that I've currently put him in. My puppy is doing the absolute best that he can with that limited education. It's only just begun in the environment that I've put him in. So, any mistakes that happen, I'm sorry. I mean, I hate to put blame on anybody, but puppies explore with their mouths. They're going to pick up stuff.

They're going to eat stuff. They're going to chew stuff. They're going to bite stuff. It's up to us to set them up for success. And I've got for you five ways that's going to happen right now. Number one, before you get your puppy, I would like to set your puppy up with puppy zones in your home. So, I'll let you know what that looks like in my home. It could be outside where I want the puppy to do their business. I'll have a pen set up. If you have a fenced-in backyard, that's great. But if it's a massive fenced-in backyard, I would section off a little area just for the puppy for the first little while when you get them home, an area that you would like them to do their business with for their lifetime so that they don't get used to going all over the backyard. But even if you don't care if they go all over the backyard, having a small area means they're not going to be digging up your garden and you're able to get them to come back into the house because I like to put my puppies in a little X-pen when they're outside. They do their business and then I can pick them up and bring them in the house. It's important, especially at night. We have coyotes around here and I don't want them running all over the property. All right. So, puppy zone number one, outside where you want them to do their business. Puppy zones in the house really depends on how big your house is and where you spend your time. So, I set up puppy zones where I spend my time. That means there's a puppy zone in my office. There's a puppy zone in the kitchen. There's a puppy zone where I work out downstairs. And there's a puppy zone in my bedroom. Okay. So, that puppy zone could mean you are hauling a crate all around or excuse me, an X-pen from room to room to room. I would really encourage you, you know what, let's do this right. Invest in at least two good quality X-pens or play pens. And I would make sure that they are at least 36 inches or 48 inches tall, depending on the height of your puppy. Because your puppy won't be the first one to crawl out and over out of an X-pen. All right. So, you want them to be tall enough that the puppy isn't likely to crawl out. And if you see the puppy thinking about it, then you put a lid on it. You know, you can just get a big tarp and put clips on the top. But really, and truly you want to supervise so that when you see them going to crawl out, you can just get in there and intervene and put their paws down. If they do it a couple of times, just put them in their crate, obviously, and make sure you take them outside first because maybe

they're telling you something. Okay. So, you want to have puppy zones. That's number one. Set them up for success. Those are X-pens. Those could also be baby gates. So, I take full advantage of baby gates. If I'm going to be in the kitchen and I know I can be supervising, I'll have the puppy in the kitchen. I'll have baby gates set up at exit so that the puppy stays confined in the kitchen with me. I can keep an eye on them. It's safe. I'll have some toys in there that they can be around with me and, you know, just learning to use their legs. You want to have them confined by gates or pens. And in the bedroom at night, I use a crate. All right. But when you're putting your puppy in a crate, it's got to be a crate big enough that they can turn around freely in it. Don't have them so cramped up. Okay. But also don't have them so big. If you make that crate super big, they're going to learn to go to the bathroom at one end and sleep at the other. So, you don't want that to happen. And I know my puppy's going to grow. I don't want to buy three crates. Just go to the thrift store or look on Facebook marketplace. You're going to find used crates. You don't need to get fancy ones, but the crates that you travel with in the car, I highly recommend the gunner crates for those. That's all I use in the car. Those things are crazy heavy. So, you don't want those around your house. Okay. So, that's it. We've got puppy zones set up. We know what food we're going to be feeding our puppy. And next, the all-important schedule. Puppies thrive on a schedule. And it really, this is your puppy's puppy loop schedule. It starts with sleep and then it's out. And then it's training. And I want to share with you what I do is feed my puppies three times a day, maybe four times a day for the first couple of weeks, but three times a day. And I break up those meals. 75% of it gets fed through training. 25% of it gets fed in a bowl that I put down in their pen or in their crate. All right. So, here's the schedule again. It's sleep out. Training, and then the rest of their food, then out. Free time so that they might be in the kitchen with me, or they might just be in their pen, the X-pen. Now that X-pen guys, this is super important. I would never leave a puppy in an X-pen and go and shower or something. I would only have that puppy in the X-pen if I'm in and out of a room and I can kind of see them because they could crawl out. They could, you know, get hung up somewhere by trying to crawl out. So, they could go and do their business and have a pee and a poop in there. You want to be able to

supervise that. Okay. It's, you know, a little less dangerous if you have no collar on the puppy when they're in their X-pen and you put a lid on it. All right. I wouldn't go out and leave them in there. I always put them in a crate if I'm leaving the house. Okay. Let me go through this cycle again. Our puppy cycle, sleep, out, training or eating, feeding, out, free time, out, back to sleep. So, that's the cycle that when you first get that puppy, you get them on that schedule and that's the way they're going to thrive because they're going to know what to expect. They're going to know when to go to the bathroom and where. So, that first week, you're going to take them out to the bathroom probably every 10 minutes to make sure they really understand where they need to go. And I would leave them out there for maybe two or three minutes. And ideally in that little pen, if you see them start to go to the bathroom, you could use the magic potty word. I use the word potty. So, as soon as I start to see them eliminate, I'll say potty, potty, potty. If I see them having a poop, then I use the term, get busy, get busy. It's a phrase. It's not a term really, is it? Get busy. So, why do we condition these words? Because then when they grow up, they will pee and poop on cue when we ask. Mind blow, right? When your puppy is, you know, you've done your training, you've had the, they've had some free time. You might then take them for a brief walk, five minutes, really. You don't want to have it go too crazy. And I would just go around in your backyard. Please don't take your new puppy. You've only had home for a day out walking down the block or around at the park. That first week, it's just about getting them to be confident and comfortable in your home. You're going to have them sleep. Puppies need to sleep a lot. So, after all of that cycle, put them back in and they're probably going to sleep till noon, right? My schedule in the morning is I get up at five, I take my puppy out for a pee and I put them right back in their crate. And then I do my morning routine in about seven o'clock, that cycle starts. Okay. Number three, tired puppy is a happy puppy. So, you want to make sure that the puppy gets a little bit of play with you and a little bit of play by themselves in their pen and some stimulation. So, it could be if you go to my puppy games, I have five puppy games that's here on YouTube. There's some videos where I show you five puppy games that I play. Those are great ones to exhaust the puppy. Both use their nose and use their brain. Mental stimulation is a great thing to exhaust a

puppy. I also have podcast number 18 is four puppy games for bite inhibition. Those would be great for you. And don't forget episode number 48 on potty training. All right. So, use all of the brief games. So, when I play with my puppies, this is really important. There's certain toys that I will use with my puppy. So, this is a great one. It's got a bungee. It's got a little squeaky in it. Go to formimerolls.com and look at this one's even got our dogs that branding on it. They don't have any shape by dogs there. Maybe that's going to be the next one for them. So, I like a little bit of a tug with the puppies. These are ones that are interactive with me. My puppies love this one with the fleece on it. It's funny, a lot of the puppies like to pull on the handle and I end up holding this end. Those are puppy toys that I use with me. Now, if I'm putting them in the pen by themselves, I love Westpaw toys. So, this is a topple that see I've got some of the raw food in there that I'll give that to my puppy that will be part of their meal. So, if I don't have time to do a lot of training, I freeze this. I put some good cookies on the top and then that's the meal. But Westpaw makes a lot of really great toys. So, this one you can put some cookies in and they roll it around and then they can get the cookies out. This is a great one because it's great for them chewing on and they can tug with you or maybe with another dog if you have other dogs. Eventually not yet with that puppy. So, Westpaw, I love their toys because we don't want our puppies chewing on hard toys because their teeth are not meant for really chewing. We got to wait till they're teething and then we can graduate to better toys. So, toys with you, I would never leave these with a puppy in their pen by themselves. I would have this sort of toy, little stuffy with a puppy in the pen when I can supervise with them, but I would never leave them alone with some of these because they could chew stuff off and swallow it. You don't want that. These are the only kind of toys I would leave with them. They can't destroy them. Now socializing plans. Dr. Ian Dunbar says with our puppies, we want to aim for the puppy to meet 50 men, 50 women, 50 children a week as they're growing up. Now we're in COVID when we're recording this, this makes it more difficult. But the most important thing, I wouldn't start any of that until the puppy's been with you at least three days. They need to know who's safe and doing what I've already suggested is going to give them an easy way to go. I go to you when I'm worried. I don't, when you're socializing,

we should do another podcast on socializing. You don't want to say, oh, here, you're a man. Can you take my puppy? Read your puppy. So, when the puppy first sees the person, give them some cookies right with you. Do they look apprehensive? They don't have to go and meet that person right away. Wait until they're happy. If they go up to the person, that's great. You pick that puppy up and let the person hold them. All right. So, puppy socializing. Now puppy socializing with other puppies, you want to do that also with a very intentional way. Don't just let them go up and meet other dogs because some dogs aren't nice with puppies. Likewise, when I get my puppies here, I don't let them socialize with my own dogs for at least a week, maybe longer. So, for example, feature I know who's 14, she doesn't hate puppies, but she doesn't really like them. So, I keep feature out of the picture for probably the first couple of weeks. They get to meet through X-Pens and baby gates and stuff like that. And the fifth thing is what is your plan for training going forward? What I would like you to do is I'm going to put in the show notes here, a list of some great podcasts. I think you should listen to them all, but I'm going to put a list of the ones I think are really pertinent for you getting your new puppy. Go through all of those first and then, or you could do this right now and then have all of it together. If you know you are committed to have the best relationship possible with your new puppy, you are committed to have this puppy be confident and that you believe that puppies and dogs are doing the best they can with the education we're giving them so that it's up to us to do it, then I've got this little training program that I've set up that I'm going to gift you. I'm going to get to that in one second. But first I'm going to tell you the five things I want you not to do with your new puppy. Number one, never scold the puppy and please don't blame them. They don't know. They're babies. All right. So, don't scold them and don't get mad. And it's going to be hard. You're going to feel overwhelmed at times, but try not to get frustrated. Go to your happy place. Think what you're grateful for. Get yourself out of it. You don't want to do a lot of exercise with the puppies when they're babies. I had a friend with his five-month-old golden doodle was taking it jogging with him. Oh, nay, nay. Right? To quote John Panay. Do not. Puppies, they need time to mature and their bones to get strong and their muscles to get strong. So, short walks, I think the golden rule is add

five minutes longer for every month they are old. And I avoid stairs. Avoid stairs until probably, I mean, if they're maybe five or six months old at the late, at the earliest, right? So, I just carry my puppy up and down stairs or avoid them altogether if you've got a Great Dane. That could be quite the carry real quick. All right. Avoid long stretches where that puppy is alone. Obviously overnight, they're going to be in their crate. And during the day, if you have to work long hours, please have somebody come in and walk your puppy at lunch and to spend some quality time interacting with that puppy. And don't have your expectations too high. Don't put too much trust in a wee baby. They don't come pre-programmed knowing how to do things, right? Don't overwhelm them. Don't overwhelm them with expectations. Don't overwhelm them. That was that first, they don't need to meet every one of your family members on the first day or the first couple of days that they're here. They don't need to meet all the people in the neighborhood. Let them build that confidence and gradually interact, introduce them to the rest of the people in your life. Okay. That training I have for you. We have all the free training here on the podcast. Amazing stuff that I put out for free. And then you write us at wagatdogsthat.com with the subject line, I am committed. That tells me you do want to raise the puppy to be as confident as possible. And my team will just send you a link that you can join into. It's just short 15-minute videos that gives you clear understanding of what to do going forward while you're training your puppy moving on to the future. I hope eventually you and I get to work together in maybe one of my recaller programs or homeschool the dog. But for now, it's a lot of free stuff. Take advantage of that. Get it all, you know, before you get your puppy, go through it now so that you know what to expect when that puppy comes to your home. And hey, let me be the first to say congratulations. Oh, you're so lucky. I love puppies. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog.