If that fantastic moment has come when you have decided to expand your family with the incorporation of a puppy. Congratulations! Now your life will be filled with more love and joy, but surely you will also have doubts about how to take care of a puppy from the appropriate form.
That is why from Dogsis we have created this complete guide about everything you need to know to properly care for your puppy, since there are many details to take into account and always a little help and good advice.
Are you ready to learn everything you need to know about taking care of puppies? It will take you a few minutes to read all this information, but you will learn everything necessary for your little dog to grow up healthy and happy, guaranteed.
Index of contents
- 1 Choose the most suitable puppy for you and your home
- 2 Prepare your home for the arrival of the puppy
- 3 Prepare a space at home for the new puppy
- 3.1 The importance of toys for a puppy
- 4 How to feed our puppy and what kind of prizes to give
- 4.1 Feeding a puppy less than three months old
- 4.2 Feeding a puppy three months old or older
- 4.3 How much food should I give my puppy?
- 4.4 Puppy awards
- 5 How to take care of the grooming of our puppy
- 5.1 Puppy bathing
- 5.2 Caring for the nails and teeth of our puppy
- 5.3 Caring for a puppy’s teeth
- 6 How to take care of the health of our puppy
- 7 The walks and the exercise of a puppy
- 7.1 The importance of a good harness or necklace
- 7.2 The education and training of a puppy
- 8 How to take care of a puppy at night
- 9 The most important thing to care for a puppy, love
Choose the most suitable puppy for you and your home
If you are going to acquire or adopt a puppy, remember that not all puppies are created equal, since each type of dog or breed has specific characteristics and these must adapt to your environment.
If you live in a small flat or apartment, the best thing to do is to adopt a small puppy, since a large breed You may feel uncomfortable from lack of space when you grow up. Remember that puppies grow very fast.
The climate of your area is also very important, if you live in the South of Spain where it is always hot, it is not recommended to adopt a dog adapted to northern climates, like a Alaskan Malamute or a Siberian Husky.
If you live in a family environment, choosing a puppy with a calm character is recommended so that both the puppy and the children are safe. Avoid adopting a very active, nervous or dangerous breed dog.
It is not the same to adopt a puppy Pinscher (like a dog Doberman small) than a puppy of Great dane (a very large dog). Remember to decide properly and you will not have problems in the future.
Prepare your home for the arrival of the puppy
Taking care of a puppy requires taking certain precautions in our home, to avoid getting hurt or suffering an accident. It is something similar to when there are small children, the puppy will try to play and bite everything, so we must prepare ourselves and make our home a safe place for the puppy.
It is very important not to leave cables or electrical devices within reach of the little puppy, the puppies are very innocent and very curious, playing they can nibble on a cable and get electrocuted by accident.
The same happens with chemical products as the utensils that we normally use to clean our home. Or if we live in a country house and have rodent traps, we must remove them so that the puppy accidentally eats the poison.
Remember that puppies pee and poop anywhere For this reason, while they learn to do it outside the home, we must collect rugs that are valuable to us, because they will surely end up pissing on more than one occasion.
Prepare a space at home for the new puppy
Puppies are very sensitive to diseases, parasites, and climatic changes. That is why they must live with us inside the home at least until they are adults, if we choose to leave them outside in the garden can suffer from serious health problems.
We must prepare one or two beds for our puppy at home, being recommended to put a bed where we live, how in the living room, and the other eat in our room, next to our own bed.
The our puppy beds They must be very comfortable and cozy, it does not help to put an old towel or cushion on the floor because the dog will not feel comfortable. Try to choose fluffy beds, where you feel very comfortable.
It is also necessary that we get two steel or aluminum bowls, one of them we will use to put the water and the other for the puppy’s meals. The water bowl should always have clean, fresh water and be available to the puppy at all times.
The importance of toys for a puppy
Among the preparations that we must make to take care of a puppy correctly, we must include the choice of suitable toys for him. Puppies have sharp milk teeth that they will nibble on.
It is his way of catching agility with his jaw, of playing to entertain himself and of alleviating the pain caused by the change of the teeth from milk to the definitive teeth during the period of teething.
We must choose several toys for our puppy that can be used as teethers, taking into account that they must be non-toxic latex. Many toys are of poor quality plastic that end up breaking and intoxicating dogs, take a good look at the manufacturing material.
How to feed our puppy and what kind of prizes to give
This is one of the most important and at the same time conflicting points that we are going to meet, on the one hand everyone wants feed your puppy with the best feeding possibleOn the other hand, the best diet is not always the cheapest.
Do not think for a second that you can feed your puppy a commercial diet (dog food in Spain, Balanced in Mexico, Croquettes in Argentina, PetFood in the United States) of poor quality, without consequences.
Your dog’s health is directly related to the quality of the food we feed him. If you don’t invest in the quality of their food, sooner or later they will get sick and you will have to invest in veterinary expenses.
Feeding a puppy less than three months old
Puppies that have a life span of less than three months must be forced to feed on breast milk, through the breasts of his mother. It is the healthiest and healthiest way to eat.
The feeding of an orphan newborn puppy should be based only on special milk for dogs, which we can acquire in veterinary clinics. Dogs should not drink cow’s milk, because it contains lactose and will cause illness and diarrhea.
Puppies are usually weaned over three months of life, so we can start adding a little special dog food, always moistened and making a kind of puree or porridge with it, to make it easier to digest.
Feeding a puppy three months old or older
Puppies over three months old can now be fed high-quality commercial food (dog food). But we must always choose a commercial diet adapted to our puppy.
If our puppy is a small breed, we should always choose a diet for small breed puppies, if it is a large breed, one for large breed puppies. We should never feed our puppy with a diet not designed for him, because he could choke and die.
The choice of the food brand is very personal, although we always recommend using high-quality products such as those offered by the companies Orijen or NFNatcane. Avoid buying low-quality products, because you will be poisoning your puppy.
How much food should I give my puppy?
The daily amount you should give your puppy varies greatly depending on the brand of commercial food you choose. Some brands indicate that a puppy should eat about three hundred grams a day while others indicate that five hundred.
You should read the instructions of the feed brand you have acquired and follow it depending on the weight of your dog. Once you know how many grams a day you should give your dog, you have to distribute it in several doses throughout the day.
- Puppies under six months: Four daily meals included in breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner.
- Puppies over six months old: Three daily intakes, including breakfast, lunch and dinner.
You should always make fresh and clean water available to your puppy, during meals and also during the rest of the day. They should be able to drink water whenever they want, without restrictions, as their food can make them very thirsty.
- Recommended daily amount of food for dogs
Puppy awards
The prizes are small jelly beans and / or dog biscuits, which we must give him when he does something right so that he assimilates that doing things well carries a prize. It is the best way to teach them, through rewards and positive reinforcement.
We can buy dog biscuits and always take them with us, when our puppy pees outside the house we will congratulate him and give him a cookie. In this way you will begin to learn that peeing outside the house and not inside, carries a prize.
This technique is actually used to teach our puppy any trick, it is the most widely used technique in dog training worldwide, because it is the one that provides the best results.
How to take care of the grooming of our puppy
In the same way that we take care of our personal grooming, taking care of a puppy requires that we also take care of his grooming. For this we must follow a series of very simple guidelines that will help you keep clean and healthy.
Finding a suitable brush for the size and thickness of your hair is essential, in this way we can brush two to three times a week, removing dead hair and dirt.
Puppy bathing
Bathing a puppy is a much more delicate task than we can imagine, we should bathe him at least once a month to keep it clean and odor free. Always very carefully, since puppies are very sensitive.
To bathe a puppy we must prepare a little warm water, a specific soap for dogs and have several towels to remove it completely. We can also use a hair dryer as long as it doesn’t burn you, since the air they emit is usually too hot.
There are two fundamental aspects when bathing a puppy, the first is to prevent them from licking soap or choking on water. The second is to dry them completely to avoid catching cold and catching a cold, being so small a simple cold can be very serious.
Caring for the nails and teeth of our puppy
Another aspect to take into account for the care of our puppy is knowing how to cut its nails properly, for this we need to know how to do it properly, since unlike humans, dogs have nerves and veins under their nails.
You can see all the necessary information at: How to cut a dog’s nails.
Caring for a puppy’s teeth
Although puppies with baby teeth do not require us to pay too much attention to their teeth, from the age of five or six months they will move the baby teeth for permanent teeth and then we must pay attention.
We can clean our dog’s teeth in two ways, with a special brush for dogs that we can find in veterinary clinics or with the use of bones suitable for dogs that will clean their teeth eliminating excess tartar.
How to take care of the health of our puppy
The health of a puppy depends on two basic factors, the security measures and precautions that we provide and the luck in life. Well-groomed puppies will obviously have much less chance of getting sick.
Vaccines are totally mandatory for dogs, especially for puppies as they will help them stay protected against the most common and dangerous diseases. Remember to check the puppy vaccination schedule.
Preventing parasites will help your puppy stay healthy, the use of flea and tick repellent collars or pipettes is mandatory. In the same way that we must deworm it internally every few months using the medication that our vet gives us.
One of the most serious problems that puppies usually have are intestinal worms, so it is vitally important that our vet tells us what type and amount of medication we should give our puppy to protect it.
The microchip is a small device the size of a tiny
grain of rice that contains information about the dog’s owner and the dog. In this way, if ours is lost, whoever finds it can locate your home and return it. Ask your vet to microchip your puppy when he is three months old, it doesn’t hurt.
A responsible act is to castrate or sterilize our puppy when it turns one year old, this way it will be able to reproduce but without having offspring. There are thousands of dogs waiting for a home in protectors, take responsibility and sterilize your puppy.
The walks and the exercise of a puppy
Once our puppy has his compulsory vaccinations, that is, from three months of life, we can start taking him out for a walk so that he knows the world around him.
It is super important that our puppy socialize Well, interact and play with other dogs, other animals, and other people. It is something you must do every day to get used to it.
Take our puppy for a walk it is essential for their intellectual and physical development, but we should never force it. We should not force our puppy to walk or run, much less exercise.
Puppies must decide for themselves how long they want to play or walk, but without our forcing them, since their resistance is not as good as that of an adult dog and we could harm them.
The importance of a good harness or necklace
Choose a collar or harness Suitable for our puppy is essential, if we choose one that is a little too big or that rubs on the paws, we will cause scratch injuries. If we choose the wrong one, you don’t want to wear it.
All puppies quarrel a little when they put the collar on for the first time, because they obviously don’t like it. But they must get used so that we can use the strap and prevent them from, for example, passing on a road or causing problems.
Remember that puppies grow very fast, so we must adjust the size of his necklace every week practically. To avoid putting too much pressure on you and preventing you from breathing easily.
The education and training of a puppy
From the age of three or four months we can begin to educate our puppy, but little by little and with sooooo much patience, since they will only want to play, eat and sleep.
The best way to educate our puppy is to start with simple things, how to give them a prize when they pee or poop away from home and congratulate them a lot, this is called positive reinforcement. If they pee or poop inside the house, we should not scold them, just ignore them and not give them a prize or congratulations.
You can start teaching him simple and basic tricks how to screw up, sit down, lie down, etc … but remember, always with a lot of patience and without forcing them.
How to take care of a puppy at night
Puppies can sleep more than half a day, but always at short intervals of time. To give you an idea, a puppy is capable of giving more than twenty nods throughout the day, which means … he won’t sleep all night.
Puppies tend to cry at night for various reasons, causing us to wake up and many times even get angry, something to avoid. So we leave you a few tips to keep your puppy from crying at night:
- Put his bed next to yours, so he knows you’re close to him.
- Put a warm bag of water on your puppy’s bed to simulate his mother’s warmth.
- Also put a small clock under her bed, because the “tick-tock” will make her think it is her mother’s heartbeat.
- A blanket in your dog’s bed can make him feel more comfortable and warmer.
- Try to leave a small light on, so that if your puppy wakes up in the middle of the night, he won’t be afraid of the dark. We have all been afraid of the darkness of children.
The most important thing to care for a puppy, love
Despite all the guidelines indicated for you to learn how to properly care for your puppy, remember that the most important of all is to do make him feel very dear, to give him affection.
Give your puppy a lot of petting and pampering, play with him, walk with him and have fun with him. Make him feel part of the family and surely you will quickly connect, remember that you should never hit him because that will create confusion in him and fears that can lead to trauma.
Dogs are highly intelligent animals, they can remember things from their childhood even when they are more than ten years old. If you take good care of him and with respect, he will always take care of you and respect you. They are part of the family, treat them as they deserve.