Free · Yours to keep · Print it if you like
Almost everything that worries new puppy owners is normal, on schedule, and about to happen to them whether they know about it or not. This is the map. What is coming, when, what people get wrong about it, and the one thing worth doing in each stretch.
You do not need a trainer for most of this. That is deliberate. If the map is all you need, take it and go, and we will be pleased it helped.
Read this part first
Sleep. A young puppy needs eighteen to twenty hours a day and almost never gets it. Fix this before you fix anything else. It changes more behaviour than any technique in this document.
Space, earned slowly. A puppy loose in nine rooms has nine rooms to patrol and nine rooms of toilet options. Start small and expand over weeks.
Being alone, from day one. Ten minutes behind a door while you are still in the house. It feels unkind for about a week. Three weeks of constant contact followed by a return to work is the unkind version.
The map
Ages are approximate. Puppies do not read calendars, and a fortnight either side of any of this is still normal.
8 to 9 weeks
Your puppy has just lost their mother, their littermates, and everything familiar, all in one car ride. Expect a quiet first day and a loud first night. Most puppies do not eat properly for the first twenty four hours and most do not sleep well for the first two or three nights. Both are normal and both pass.
What people worry about
That the crying at night means the crate is cruel, or that a quiet puppy is a sick puppy.
The one thing to do. Pick one small area of the house and keep them in it. Not the whole downstairs. One or two rooms with the doors shut, and everything else earned later. It is far easier to give space than to take it back.
9 to 10 weeks
Baby teeth are sharp and your puppy explores with their mouth because that is the only tool they have. Your hands, your sleeves, the backs of your legs while you walk. This is not aggression and it is not a warning sign about temperament.
What people worry about
That the biting means the puppy is dominant or badly bred.
The one thing to do. Count the hours your puppy is actually asleep. A puppy this age needs somewhere around eighteen to twenty hours a day, and most puppies in busy houses get nowhere near it. A great deal of the worst biting is an overtired puppy, and you will usually see the difference within three days of fixing it.
10 to 12 weeks
This is usually the loudest stretch. The biting is at its worst, house training is still in progress, and the novelty has worn off for everyone in the house. If you are wondering whether you have made a terrible mistake, you are exactly on schedule.
What people worry about
That it is not working, that this puppy is worse than other people's, or that something has gone wrong.
The one thing to do. Put two or three enforced rest periods into the day, at set times, whether or not the puppy seems tired. Crate or pen, something to chew, door shut, ninety minutes. An overtired puppy does not look tired, they look wild, which is why nobody thinks to try this.
12 to 14 weeks
Somewhere around sixteen weeks, a puppy's brain stops filing new things as normal by default and starts filing them as new, which means they get evaluated. Before that, exposure is close to free. After it, everything takes longer.
What people worry about
That socialization means meeting as many dogs as possible. It does not, and the dog park version of it causes more problems at eight months than it solves at twelve weeks.
The one thing to do. Aim for variety rather than volume, at a distance your puppy can handle. Metal grates, gravel, a wobbly board, someone in a hi vis jacket, a vacuum in another room, rain on a metal roof. None of it needs to involve another dog. A puppy who has watched fifty odd things happen calmly from twenty feet away has been socialized properly.
14 to 16 weeks
Your puppy will start choosing other things over you. It reads as defiance and it is not. What has actually happened is that their world got bigger and more interesting, and you are now competing with it for the first time.
What people worry about
That the puppy is being stubborn, and that the answer is to be firmer.
The one thing to do. Stop repeating yourself. Say the name once, then go and make it happen rather than saying it four more times. A cue that gets repeated five times becomes a different cue, and a lot of long term listening problems start right here.
4 to 6 months
Adult teeth come through and the chewing escalates, often onto furniture and walls rather than toys. Ears may go up and down. Some puppies get suddenly clingy and some get suddenly bold.
What people worry about
That the house training has broken, when usually the puppy has just been given too much unsupervised space too early.
The one thing to do. Shrink the space again for a fortnight and give them something genuinely worth chewing. Most of what gets called regression at this age is a management problem rather than a training one.
6 to 9 months
This is the one that catches everybody. The puppy who came running at four months now looks at you, thinks about it, and goes the other way. Owners describe it as everything unravelling and it is close to universal.
What people worry about
That the training did not take. It did. What has changed is that your dog is now old enough to ask whether the rules were ever real.
The one thing to do. Put the long line back on for six weeks and stop calling when you are not confident they will come. Whatever you answer during this stretch is the answer you keep, so it is worth answering carefully.
The limits
It cannot tell you whether your particular puppy is where they should be, because that depends on things a document cannot see. Two puppies of the same age from the same litter can need opposite things.
It cannot tell you whether something is a normal stage or an actual problem. Most of the time it is a stage. Occasionally it is not, and the ones that are not tend to get missed because everybody has been told to wait it out.
And it cannot tell you what you are doing that is making something worse, which is usually where the fastest progress is hiding.
If you get stuck on any of this, write to us and we will answer. There is no charge for that and nobody will phone you.
When you want a hand
We run a small puppy program in Idaho Springs, forty minutes up the hill from Denver. Eight weeks to five months, ten days, and then the work on your own ground afterwards, which is the part that decides whether it holds.
Past five months it is a different piece of work, called the K9 Reset, because undoing habits and building them are not the same job.
Start with a call. Fifteen minutes, tell us the age and what is happening, and you will get a straight answer about which one fits.