Your Puppy's First Night Home

Bringing a new puppy home is about as exciting as it gets. Hopefully you've had a chance to plan ahead and have all the puppy gear you'll need on hand. For the first night, there's one item that's going to make everyone's life a lot easier: a towel.

This very special towel needs to have been dropped off at the breeder's house or the animal shelter at day or two before the day you'll bring the puppy home. It should be put in the play area of the puppy, its litter-mates, and its mother. The idea is for the towel to get loaded up with all the familiar, reassuring smells the puppy has been surrounded with all its life so far. If you aren't able to drop off the towel, gently rub it over the puppy's litter-mates and its mother as much as you can. Even a little bit of smell is going to help you and the puppy tonight.

Wrapping the puppy in the towel as you drive home will also be helpful. Puppies can "leak" or urinate just a wee bit if they're over excited, and just the car ride home - let alone the first few hours in your house - are the most excitement your puppy has ever seen.

All that excitement is going to work for you. When its time to get ready for bed, hopefully you'll have one tired pup. Be sure to go out for one last potty break, then introduce your puppy to the pen or crate or large box you expect them to sleep in. Make sure that wonderfully smelly towel goes in with the puppy. If you have a hot water bottle to wrap the blanket up in, all the better.

Now we come to the big dilemma of how to handle your puppy's first night: is it going to be in the kitchen, or your bedroom? Trainers who believe the kitchen is best maintain that the puppy has to grow up and get used to being on its own anyway, and coddling it the first few nights only delays this process. Other trainers believe that the puppy has already had a radical change in its environment and its social structure and that's enough change for one day. They also reason that if we want the puppy to bond to us, keeping it close to us for the first night or two goes a long way to building that bond. They also worry that undue stress the first nights home may contribute to stress-related behaviors later, like chewing and separation anxiety.

Ultimately, of course, the kitchen-or-bedroom decision is up to you. But: once you've made the decision, don't go back on it. If you opt the for kitchen (which is what I did, and later regretted it), expect to hear crying through the night. Expect to feel bad about it. The really hard part is that once the crying has started, if you go to the puppy, then you have just taught it that if it cries, you'll come. The net result of that is going to be a lot more crying. Puppies learn fast. At least you got the smelly towel to reassure the puppy with, and that should help with the whining.

If you opt to keep the puppy in your bedroom the first night or two, you'll still hear whining. Its OK to say a few reassuring words to the puppy, or to pet it or hold it a couple of times. Don't let it actually sleep in the bed with you - the puppy must be confined. Some people put the box or pen next to their bed and let their hand hang over the side of the bed into the puppy pen. If you want to go that far, great. But so long as the puppy can hear you and smell you, then that's good enough.

Unless your puppy - soon to be dog - is going to sleep in your bedroom every night, you'll need to move them into their permanent sleeping place after the first night or two. This will result in some whining again, put you've given your puppy a reasonable transition time and its OK for them to do some whining. Just don't come to reassure them, or you've re-enforced the whining. Eventually, that leads to a whiny dog.