What do I need before bringing a puppy home?

A puppy's first weeks with you do more to determine the adult dog than anything you do later. The socialisation period, when a puppy readily accepts new experiences as normal, is largely over by around sixteen weeks — which overlaps almost entirely with the period when it cannot yet walk on the ground in public places. That tension is the central planning problem, and it is solvable if you know about it in advance.

Safety

What you'll need

• Bed, crate or pen, bowls, collar and tag, harness and lead
• The food the breeder is using
• Enzymatic cleaner
• Vet registration and insurance in place
• Baby gates (optional)
• Puppy training class booked (optional)

Step by step

1. Do the paperwork before the puppy arrives.Register with a vet, arrange insurance so it is live on the day of collection, and make sure the microchip transfer into your name is completed. Insurance bought after a problem is noticed will not cover it, so this genuinely has to be beforehand.
2. Buy the equipment, and buy the boring things.Bed, crate or puppy pen, two bowls, a flat collar with an engraved tag, a harness, a light lead, a long line for later, safe chews, a food toy, and an enzymatic cleaner — an ordinary household cleaner does not break down the smell that draws a puppy back to the same spot.
3. Get the same food the breeder is using.A move is a big enough change without a new diet on top. Feed what the puppy is used to for at least the first fortnight, then transition gradually over a week or more if you want to change.
4. Puppy-proof and set up a safe space.A pen or a gated room with the bed, water, some chews and nothing dangerous, where the puppy can be left safely for short periods and can sleep undisturbed. Cables, medicines, cleaning products and small swallowables sorted before arrival, not after the first incident.
5. Plan the socialisation properly, and start immediately.Before vaccinations are complete, carry the puppy out into the world — the high street, a bus stop, a car park, the school run, past traffic and pushchairs and bicycles. Have visitors of different ages and appearances at home. Play recordings of fireworks and thunder at low volume. Handle its feet, ears and mouth daily. This window is short and it does not come back.
6. Ask the vet exactly when the puppy can go on the ground and meet other dogs.It depends on the vaccine used and the local disease risk, so it is a question for your own practice rather than a fixed rule. Meanwhile, meeting healthy fully vaccinated adult dogs belonging to friends, in a private garden, is a valuable and lower-risk option.
7. Plan the first two weeks around being at home.Book time off if you can. Then, crucially, start leaving the puppy alone for very short periods from the first week — seconds, then minutes — so that being alone is a normal thing rather than something that begins abruptly when you go back to work.
8. Set up the first night to work.Most puppies settle better with the crate or bed next to you for the first few nights, moving it gradually to where you want it. Expect one or two toilet trips in the night — carry the puppy out, no talking, no play, straight back to bed. It is a fortnight of disruption, not a permanent arrangement.
9. Book a reward-based puppy class before you need one.Good classes fill up. Look for small groups, qualified instructors from a recognised body, and no aversive equipment — no prong collars, no electric collars, no rank or dominance language. A class is as much about safe socialisation with other puppies as it is about training.
10. Book the first vet appointment for the first few days.A health check, a plan for the remaining vaccinations, worming and flea treatment, a conversation about neutering timing, and confirmation that the microchip reads and is registered to you. It also makes the practice a normal place rather than one associated only with something unpleasant.

Tips

• Puppies need around eighteen to twenty hours of sleep a day. Most 'hyperactive' evening puppies are over-tired, and enforcing naps in the pen fixes more behaviour than exercise does.
• Ask the breeder for a cloth or blanket that smells of the litter and the mother. It makes the first nights considerably easier.
• Record what the puppy has already met on a list. It shows you the gaps in socialisation while there is still time to fill them.

Common mistakes

• Keeping the puppy at home until vaccinations are finished — The socialisation window closes at around sixteen weeks. A puppy that has seen nothing until then is at real risk of lifelong fearfulness. Carry it out instead of keeping it in.
• Never leaving the puppy alone for the first fortnight — It makes the first time you leave a much bigger event. Very short absences from the first week are how separation problems are prevented.
• Changing the food on day one — A new home and a new diet at once reliably produces diarrhoea. Keep the breeder's food and change later, gradually.
• Buying a puppy without seeing it with its mother — It is a legal requirement in Great Britain that you see them together where the puppy was bred, and it is the single most effective check against a puppy farm.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask