Module 2 — First 30 Days Academy™
The first 72 hours
About 7 minutes
Everything you do in the first three days is either building a routine or building a habit you will spend a month undoing. The good news is that the correct plan is the easy one: do less.
One room, not the whole house
Pick the room you spend the most time in and gate it. A puppy given the run of a house is not exploring, they are being overwhelmed, and an overwhelmed puppy pees, bites and cannot sleep.
The house opens up one room at a time over the following three weeks, and each new room comes with a fresh set of supervised potty trips.
Nobody new for a week
Your mother wants to come over. So do the neighbours, and the friends who have been watching the litter photos for two months. Tell all of them the same thing: next weekend.
This is the least popular instruction we give and the one that changes week one the most. The puppy has just lost their mother, their littermates and every smell they know. A parade of strangers on top of that is not socialization, it is stress.
Sleep is the actual job
A seven-week-old puppy sleeps somewhere between sixteen and twenty hours a day. If yours is manic, biting hard and unable to settle, the answer is almost never more exercise. It is a nap.
Aim for forty-five minutes awake, then crate, door shut, lights low, while you stay in the room. Most of the behaviour people describe as a difficult puppy is an overtired one.
The first potty trip happens before the front door
Out of the car, straight to the spot you want to be the spot forever, and then stand there and say nothing. Talking is a distraction. Wait it out, then praise the moment it happens, not thirty seconds later in the kitchen.
Before you move on
- —Crate built before you leave to collect the puppy
- —One gated room chosen
- —Visitors postponed by a week
- —Potty spot decided and used first
- —Vet check booked for day three