Bringing Home a New Puppy: The First Seven Days

The first week with a new puppy is exhausting, and it is easy to spend all of it simply keeping the thing fed, watered and out of trouble. It is worth knowing that this particular week carries more weight than the ones that follow it.

It is when toilet habits form, when the puppy learns whether being left alone is survivable, and when any health problem it arrived with becomes obvious. Handle this week well and a great deal of the next year is easier.

Before the puppy arrives

Prepare one room rather than the whole house. A puppy given free run of a large space will toilet in corners you did not know existed and find every cable. You need:

• A crate or bed, sized so it can stand and turn but not much more
• Food and water bowls, and the same food it is already eating
• A collar with an ID tag, and a light lead
• Chew toys, because it will chew something regardless of your preferences
• Cleaning supplies with an enzymatic cleaner, not bleach

Ask the breeder or shelter three things: what it eats and how often, what vaccinations and deworming it has had with dates, and when it last ate before collection.

Day one

Collect the puppy in the morning if you can, so it has daylight hours to settle. Take it straight to the spot you want it to use as a toilet and wait. Then let it explore its room quietly.

Resist the urge to invite everyone over. A puppy that has just left its mother and littermates is dealing with enough. Keep the first day small, calm and boring.

Feed the food it already knows, at the times it is used to. If you intend to change diet, do it gradually over a week once it has settled, mixing increasing amounts of the new food into the old. An abrupt switch on top of the stress of moving home is a reliable route to diarrhoea.

The first nights

It will cry. This is not manipulation; it has never slept alone in its life.

The approach that works is to put the crate beside your bed for the first few nights, so it can hear and smell you, then move it gradually to where you want it to sleep. This costs a few nights of interrupted sleep and saves months of separation problems.

A puppy of eight weeks cannot last the night without toileting. Expect to get up once or twice. Take it out with minimal fuss, no play, no talking, then straight back to bed. It should learn that night-time exits are functional, not fun.

Toilet training

The whole method is anticipation and reward.

Take the puppy out after every sleep, every meal, every play session, and roughly every hour in between. When it goes in the right place, praise immediately, while it is still going. Reward delivered thirty seconds later teaches nothing.

When there is an accident indoors, and there will be, clean it with an enzymatic cleaner so no scent marker remains. Do not punish. A puppy that is scolded for toileting learns to hide it, which is a much harder problem to fix.

The first vet visit

Book this in the first few days, even if the puppy seems perfectly well. The visit exists to:

• Confirm what vaccinations are actually due, from dated records rather than assurance
• Check for worms, fleas, ticks and mites
• Listen to the heart for murmurs
• Check the eyes, ears, mouth, and that both testicles have descended in males
• Weigh the puppy, giving you a baseline to measure growth against

Take a fresh stool sample if you can. Worms are extremely common in puppies and easily treated once identified.

Watch for these in week one

Contact a vet promptly for any of the following, because puppies deteriorate quickly:

• Repeated vomiting, or any bloody diarrhoea
• Refusing food for more than one meal, or refusing water
• Lethargy, or difficulty rousing
• Pale gums
• Coughing, or laboured breathing
• A wobbly, uncoordinated gait

Bloody diarrhoea with vomiting in an unvaccinated puppy should be treated as an emergency. Parvovirus moves fast, and hours matter.

Start socialisation now

The window in which puppies accept new experiences without fear closes at around sixteen weeks, and it does not reopen. That creates tension with vaccination, since the course is not finished by then.

The way through is controlled exposure. Carry the puppy through busy places so it hears traffic, market noise and crowds without walking where unvaccinated dogs have been. Invite calm, fully vaccinated adult dogs to visit. Let it meet people of different ages and appearances at home. Get it used to being handled: paws, ears, mouth, tail, a little every day, so that future vet visits and grooming are uneventful.

What to expect by day seven

A settled puppy is eating well, sleeping through most of the night with one break, using its toilet spot most of the time, and playing confidently. It will still have accidents and still chew the wrong things. That is normal, and both improve with consistency rather than correction.

Our new puppy starter checklist and first-year care calendar are free to print and cover the months after this week.

Expect those months to be busy. The first year asks more of a dog's health, and of an owner's wallet, than any year that follows: the vaccination course, repeated deworming, the check-ups, and whatever a curious puppy manages to eat along the way. It is the stretch in which good intentions most often lose to timing.

A Skeepy Pet HMO plan covers the vaccinations, deworming, consultations and treatment that first year involves, at any vet clinic in Nigeria across the country.