Bringing Home a New Puppy
Posted on Jan 3, 2013 7:10pm PST
When is it a good time to bring home your new puppy?
Contrary to what most people think, it is NOT a good Idea to purchase a puppy while on vacation. Or to take a week off to be home with a new baby. And absolutely not when the kids start summer vacation!
The reason is that most puppies are brought home between 9 and 12 weeks. This is a primary imprint period for a dog. Many of the personality traits your pet will have for the rest of his life will be formed between 8 and 16 weeks.
Bichons are very people oriented dogs. They love to be with you and near you. When you change your normal routine and arrange to be home 24/7 with your new puppy, you are sending him the wrong signal. If you do that during that first few weeks, your puppy will become imprinted that someone is to be with him constantly. You are showing him that you are there all the time and he is imprinting to constant company. After you go back to work and or the kids go back to school you may have a dog that suffers from separation anxiety. You may have a problem leaving him alone for even a few hours. He may howl, bark, cry, defecate all over or destroy property when left alone.
In the wild, by the time the cubs are 3 to 4 weeks old, the mother wolf must leave her pups alone for many hours to hunt or they will all starve. The pups learn early to wait quietly in the den for her return. If they wander about or cry out, they will call attention to themselves and a predator can come and kill them.
Bring your new baby home and set up his crate in the room he will stay in. Now go on about your normal routine. He will need to sleep a lot anyway. So come and go as you normally would. Let your new puppy adjust to your schedule. For the first several days, limit his freedom to that room only. He is less likely to cry when left alone if he doesn’t realize there is any place better to go than where he is. Animals are creatures of habit. He will be much more comfortable if you keep him in one place for the first few days so he is not overwhelmed trying to get used too many new things all at once.