What the puppy already knows

Weeks three to five

The floor starts changing under them: carpet, tile, gravel, a wobble board, a sheet of plastic. Each new surface is a small problem a puppy solves, and a puppy who has solved five of them approaches the sixth differently. This is the whole idea behind everything below.

Handling starts here too. Every puppy is picked up, turned over, has its feet held and its ears looked in, every day, by more than one person. Your vet will thank us.

Weeks five to eight

• Crate. Fed in an open crate from five weeks, then short shut periods. They do not arrive crate-trained, but they arrive without thinking a crate is a punishment.
• Car. Two or three short trips, ending somewhere good.
• Stairs. Three steps, up and down, supervised.
• Noise. Vacuum cleaner, dropped pans, a washing machine on spin, and — at a distance and only for the ones going to shooting homes — gunfire, always paired with dinner.
• People. Children, men in hats, someone with a stick, somebody in a wheelchair when we can arrange it.
• Alone. Ten minutes at a time, on their own, without the litter. It is the single most useful thing we do and the one most litters skip.

House training

Started, not finished. They use a litter area away from the sleeping area from about four weeks, which means the instinct is already there and you are building on it rather than starting from nothing. Expect three or four weeks of work at your end. Anyone who tells you their puppies go home house-trained is describing a puppy that will wet your floor on day two.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not start formal obedience. A puppy that has been drilled on sit and stay by somebody else arrives with a relationship already formed, and the first month at your house is worth more spent building that with you. Take them to a class in week two of owning them; you will get a better dog out of it than we could give you.