3 Habits to Start With Your Puppy The First Day

On day one, most people focus on the cute parts of bringing home a puppy, like cuddling, playing, and taking lots of photos for Instagram and their friends. What if, starting on day one, we focused on the habits that prevent behavior issues from forming and your puppy having serious behavior issues later in life? 

1) Always use a house line on your puppy from day one. 

I recommend a slip lead, and the reason for this is because you want to control your puppy’s space. You don't want them roaming around, peeing and pooping everywhere, chewing up everything, hiding under the tables, and getting themselves in trouble. 

This isn't about dragging your puppy around. This is for structured supervision. A house line lets you guide your puppy, interrupt unwanted behaviors, move them calmly, and prevent bad habits before they start. It's one of the simplest tools for raising a confident, respectful puppy, and I use it with all of my clients. 

Every time somebody hires me to start training their new puppy and I go to their house and I open the door, their puppy's running around the house and they have no control over the puppy. You don't want the puppy jumping up on furniture and doing things that are going to go outside of their boundaries. You have to control their boundaries. You have to have rules, and the easiest way to do this is with a house line. I suggest a slip lead.

2) Start socializing your puppy from day one the right way. 

This doesn't mean letting them go outside and play with dogs. They can see dogs from a distance of 10 feet away. You don't want them to react to the dog by barking, lunging, crying.  Socializing them early will help prevent leash reactivity, which is a common unwanted dog behavior. They start getting really bad leash reactivity if they weren't socialized early on. 

I put a video on the Instagram page of Top Gun Dog training the other day of a nine week old puppy that we took out front, and they're just sitting there on their harness and their leash doing nothing. Watching things go by. Feeling the breeze, looking at the butterflies, looking at the birds, hearing the planes, cars, people across the street, dogs down the road, and they're not reacting to it.  This calm, controlled exposure of the puppy sitting out front and just watching things go by is the best way to socialize a puppy. 

When I bring a puppy to Home Depot or Lowe's to start their socialization in public, I always have them go to the entrance and sit or lay down and do nothing. Just watch the pallet jacks, the forklifts, the shopping carts, and the flatbeds. Watch people come in and out and not react to them. They just watch and hang out, and that's great socialization. If they haven't had all their vaccines, they're going to ride in a hopping cart. so that they can get used to the sites and sounds and all of the elements of being in a high traffic public location. 

Under socialized puppies are always the ones with problem later in life. They've got fear, anxiety, stress, and leash reactivity. These are serious problems that show up around nine months when they reach adolescence. To prevent that from happening, you have to start socializing your puppy immediately.

3) Create a predictable schedule every day. 

Puppies thrive on structure. You should always follow the same routine throughout the day. It's very simple. Your day should follow a repeated pattern like this:

• You wake up, take the puppy to go potty. 

• They eat and drink.

• You train for five to 10 minutes with some of their food, so don't give them all their food in their bowl. Use some of their food for training. 

• You have structured play. For example, play fetch and have them drop it. Have them sit and wait for the ball. You throw it again, and have them bring it back and drop it for you. You don’t want  them to run around with it. This is structured play. It's mental stimulation with play. 

• Have them chew something, maybe a bully stick or a nyla bone.

• Then you crate them for sleep. Puppies have to have 16 to 18 hours of sleep a day. 

• You repeat that cycle around again throughout the entire day.

A puppy who sleeps, trains and plays with structure is automatically calmer and more confident and easier to raise because they don't have excessive energy that's not being used, and the puppy knows what's going to happen next. They don't have to worry about it. 

Notice that I never mentioned affection in the structure because affection is at the very bottom of the list. Give the puppy a life reward at the end of the day. Hold them, cuddle with them, give them some kisses. That's great at the end of the day, but they don't need it all the time.  You must give them a life that's full and complete. That goes beyond affection. okay? That's not gonna create a happy, healthy, obedient puppy 

I did all of these things with Dixie early on, and she is a great dog. She went to the vet today to get her checkup for heart disease, and the vet always says how calm and well behaved she is at the vet. She's always easy to be around. She's very calm and comfortable, and everybody loves her, and she loves everybody. This is the type of dog that everybody wants to raise. You don't want raise a dog that has problems.

Review

• Use a house line, use a slip lead in the house for your puppy until they're probably four months old, 

• Daily socialization from the very beginning and 

• A predictable schedule, a structured schedule from day one. 

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