Your first week with a new puppy

The first week is not a bonding montage. It is a tired, slightly messy stretch of time in which a young animal works out where the floor is, where you are, and whether the world is safe. Expect that, and it goes far better.

Sleep first, because everything else depends on it. A puppy of eight to twelve weeks sleeps sixteen to twenty hours a day, in short blocks. If yours is biting hard, spinning in circles or shrieking at the end of the lead, it is almost never defiance — it is overtiredness. Give the day a shape: forty to sixty minutes awake, then back to a quiet, enclosed rest place, even if you have to carry a wide-awake puppy there. Most owners under-rest their puppy in week one and pay for it in week two.

Toileting is a schedule, not a training programme. The rough rule is roughly one hour of bladder control per month of age, plus one, and daytime only. So a nine-week-old is a two-hour dog, at best. Go out after every sleep, every meal, every play session, and last thing at night. Stand still, say nothing, wait up to five minutes, then reward within two seconds of the last drop with something genuinely good. Two seconds — not once you are back inside.

Overnight, most eight-week puppies need one or two trips. Keep them boring: no lights, no talking, no play, straight back to bed. Within ten to fourteen days most puppies drop to one trip, then to none.

What normal looks like: three to four meals a day, inhaled; loose-ish but formed stools; hiccups; a soft cough after drinking; sleeping like a dropped sock; twenty minutes of frantic evening zoomies. Also normal is a puppy that is quiet and withdrawn for the first 24 to 48 hours and then suddenly noisy and cheeky on day three. That is confidence arriving, not a regression.

Not normal, and worth a call to your vet the same day: refusing two meals in a row, watery diarrhoea, vomiting more than once, a puppy that will not get up, pale gums, or a very small puppy that simply goes flat — toy breeds can drop their blood sugar fast. Do not wait overnight to see what happens. Your vet decides what it is; your job is to notice early.

What not to do in week one: do not run a parade of visitors through the house; do not take a not-yet-fully-vaccinated puppy to a busy park — ask your vet what is safe where you live, because the timing depends on local diseases and vaccine schedules; do not punish an accident; and do not teach a howling puppy that howling opens the crate door. Sit next to the crate instead. Move it beside your bed.

By day seven you should have a puppy that sleeps in blocks, toilets in a spot it prefers, and follows you around the house. That is it. That is the entire goal of the first week. Everything else has a whole year to arrive.