The first six weeks at home

If there is a part of dog-owning where what you do genuinely shapes the next decade, it is the six weeks after the puppy arrives.

By that point most owners have done their research, asked the right questions, chosen a breeder carefully, and put the deposit down. And then — quite suddenly — the puppy is in their kitchen, and the careful preparation runs out. There is very little written about the bit that follows. Yet those six weeks set the rhythm of the next ten years: how the dog sleeps, how it eats, how it reacts to strangers, how it handles being alone, how it sits with your other animals, how it copes with the vet. Almost all of it is being decided in the first month and a half.

Here is what to think about. Not a schedule, more a frame.

Day one: do less than you think

The most common mistake on day one is enthusiasm. The puppy has just been removed from its mother, its siblings, its smell, its routine, and everything it has ever known. It does not need a welcoming party. It needs sleep, a bowl of the same food the breeder was feeding it, a quiet corner that smells of nothing alarming, and not very much else. If you have children, you have already heard the advice: greet the puppy briefly, calmly, and then let it nap. The puppy is exhausted, and the next forty-eight hours will be a haze of small confusions for it. Hold the friends-and-family round of introductions for week two.

The first week: sleep, food, and getting to a vet

Three real jobs in the first week.

Sleep. Decide where the puppy will sleep — the wire crate in the kitchen, the box by your bed, the corner of the utility room — and stick with it. Whatever you choose on night one is what the puppy will treat as home. Moving the spot later is much harder than picking the right one now.

Food. Feed exactly what the breeder was feeding, in the same quantities, for at least the first two weeks. If you want to change food later, you change it gradually after that. Sudden food changes are the single most common cause of an upset stomach in the first week — which is the last thing a stressed puppy needs.

Vet. Book the first vet visit for the end of week one, even if nothing is specifically wrong. This achieves four things at once: it gets the puppy used to the trip and the smell of the practice while the stakes are low, it lets your vet look the puppy over while it is healthy and start a baseline, it confirms the vaccination position, and — usefully — it begins a relationship with the practice that will run for the next decade.

This is also the moment to start the GenoVaq lifelong health record. The vaccination certificate from the breeder, the microchip details, the dam and sire's health-testing certificates — put them in now, while you still have them all to hand, before the kitchen drawer eats them. Ten years from now, when the dog is older, you will be grateful you did.

Weeks two and three: routine, not noise

Puppies learn from repetition, not intensity. By the end of the first week the puppy will have settled, and you can begin building the rhythm: the same meals at the same times, the same short walks to the same places, the same crate at night, the same calm response when it gets things wrong. Tedious adults are excellent puppy raisers.

This is also the window when most well-meaning owners try to do too much socialisation, too fast. The right kind of socialisation is brief, positive, and chosen — a calm older dog you trust, a quiet child who knows how to ignore a dog, a single visitor in the kitchen who does not make a fuss. The wrong kind is a busy café, a dog park, a children's party. A frightened puppy at week three is much harder to recover than an under-socialised one at week six.

Weeks four to six: the world, in small doses

By now the puppy has its rhythm, you have your rhythm, and you can begin to widen the world. The principle stays the same: small doses, watch the reaction, retreat if you see fear. The point of these weeks is not to expose the dog to everything; it is to teach the dog that new things are normal, mildly interesting, and not worth worrying about. Two or three new things a day is plenty. Five or six is too many.

The things nobody told you

A few things that nobody will say in the puppy class, because they are not really teachable.

You will be tired. You will be more tired than you expected to be. The puppy will need the toilet at three in the morning for the first fortnight and you will wonder, briefly, whether this was a mistake. It was not. The tiredness ends.

Your other animals will not love it immediately. An older dog or a cat watching a new puppy arrive is, briefly, working out where it sits in the household now. This usually settles within a fortnight. Do not force the introductions. Let the older animal set the pace.

The breeder will want to hear from you. A good breeder is not done when the puppy leaves their house. Send a photograph, send a short note about how the first week went. Most breeders will be quietly thrilled. They have just released a small part of years of work into the world; they want to know it landed well.

Your vet is more useful than you think. Most owners only see their vet when something is wrong. The owners whose dogs do best are the ones who use the relationship as a sounding board in the easy weeks too — a brief call, a quick email, a short visit. If it helps, there is a short page describing how GenoVaq fits into that relationship on the vet's side; but the principle does not require any platform at all. Your vet is the most valuable single contact you now have for the next ten years.

The short version

The first six weeks are not the most fun weeks of owning a dog — but they are the weeks where the foundations are laid, and the foundations matter. A small set of disciplines — same food, same place, same routine, small doses of the world, an early relationship with the vet, the records kept somewhere they will not be lost — is most of the work. The rest is mainly affection, patience, and accepting that the tiredness is part of the deal.

The good news is that the first six weeks pass quickly, and by week seven you have what every responsible breeder hoped for when they sent the puppy to you: a settled dog, in a calm household, on the way to a good life.

— Rene