Adjusting Your House To Getting A Puppy

Are you working from home and thinking of getting a new puppy for your family? Here’s some tips to help get prepared.

 

As a work at home mum, getting a puppy is such an exciting time for the family. These cute little furbabies create such love and loyalty, they quickly become your new family member. But getting to a level of trust and teaching your puppy can be hard process without some guidance, and without any training when they’re younger can lead to a puppy growing up to be a badly behaved dog.

Dogs are one of the best pets, proving the saying a man’s best friend. Puppies will love and cherish you for life, so putting in the effort when they’re young can make such a difference. To help all our SuperWAHMs out there, I’ve created a short guide for when you first bring home your new puppy, so you can feel a little more prepared for when your new family member arrives home! If you would like to find out more about getting a puppy and all the things you will need, have a read here.

 

What to do when you first bring home a puppy

The first thing you should do when you’re getting a puppy should be to puppy proof your home. This is a crucial step. You want to make sure to remove any small objects a puppy could swallow that could be harmful, and to remove any power cords being accessible. Puppies love to explore and search for new things. You should also move anything that is expensive, breakable or irreplaceable, until you can trust your pup not to destroy something.

Puppy proofing your home doesn’t just mean moving everything and cleaning up. It also means getting ready for accidents. Having lots of paper towel and a dog friendly cleaner for your floor is also as important, along with any essentials such a puppy pads, pooper scoopers, exercise pen and a furniture roller for the dog hair.

 

Training your new puppy while working from home

Once you have puppy proofed your home, you can now focus on what your puppy needs directly. This may be a crate, puppy pads, play pen, bed, leash, and toys. These items are all very important for the training and getting a puppy for your family.

A puppy needs to be watched constantly until you can trust them to be alone in your home. Even though you’re working from home, there needs to be a balance between focusing on your work, and spending time with the puppy. This is why having a crate and a puppy play pen is great to teach them to be alone but also so they don’t get into anything they shouldn’t be! A crate is highly valuable, as it gives them somewhere to feel like it’s their den, it’s a safe place for them and can be taken places for if you travel or need to have a vet overnight stay.

A good rule of thumb is no more than 1 hour per age in months they are, and no more than 6 hours alone in the crate after 6 months of age (except when it’s bed time). So for example, 3 months equals 3 hours maximum in the crate during the day.

Puppies don’t have the ability to hold their bladder very long while they’re young, so you will also need to let them out hourly to go to the toilet, and have pee pads readily available until they can hold it for longer. It’s also a good idea to have some floor cleaning products (dog safe) around and some paper towel for any mistakes they may make.

 

Treats for your new puppy

There are 3 levels of treats you can give to your puppy in training, and will need to try a few out to work out which treat is what level and works best for your puppy. There are low reward treats, used in settings with less to no distractions; high value treats, the ones the your pup will do anything for and will ignore all the distractions to have. This kind of treat is only used rarely in the high distraction training sessions.

Then there is the slow eating and teeth cleaning treats. These treats are used to stop boredom and to function as a tool to clean your puppies teeth and keep their breath fresh. All of these treats will aid in the training of your new puppy.

 

Enjoy your time with your new puppy!

Getting a puppy shouldn’t be stressful, although there is a lot of work involved with a new puppy. If you (and the kids!) put in those hours now, the puppy will blossom into a well-trained, amazing family member. It only takes an hour or two a day while they’re young to set the foundations up really well, so they will be able to come across anything in the future confidently. And don’t forget, getting a puppy is so exciting, make sure you enjoy your pup’s time, they’re only this small for so long!