You’ve chosen your puppy and you’re fizzing with excitement for the day you get to bring your new best friend home. It feels like all you’ve got to do now is wait. But there’s so much you can do right now to make your first few weeks with your new puppy go as smoothly as possible.

Bringing your new puppy home is one of the most exciting days of your life. But it can also be one of the most stressful. Puppies need to learn so much to grow into amazing adult dogs. You’ve got this overwhelming list of things you need to teach your puppy. But you have no idea what you should teach them first and whether you should start training them now or wait until they’re a bit older.

A lot of people wait until they go to puppy classes to train their puppy. But this isn’t a great idea. Your puppy is constantly learning all about the world and how they’re expected to behave. If you wait weeks to teach your puppy anything then they’ll probably have learnt a lot of things you would rather they didn’t…

Socialisation is how puppies learn about the world they will be living in and how they’re supposed to behave. Puppies need to learn what is safe and what isn’t. During their ‘socialisation period’ they’re more likely to assume new species, objects and situations are safe. This period ends at around 16 weeks and after this dogs are more likely to approach these things with caution. But that doesn’t mean that your puppy can’t learn about the world after they’re 16 weeks - it’ll just be a little harder for them and you.