There’s nothing like the first day home with your adorable pup with all the snuggles and cuteness overload. While they do spend most of their day sleeping, the other half of the day is making all kinds of messes! When adopting a puppy, it is important to take that into consideration and even better, how to prevent those messes.
Close Bathroom Doors
Puppies are enamored with trash cans and toilets, and both happen to be readily available in your bathroom. A bathroom is a place full of new smells and particularly their human’s smells so of course, it’s a place a puppy wants to visit constantly. If the door is left open, you can almost guarantee your bathroom will be covered in ripped-up tissue and anything else that was in the trash. The appeal of the toilet bowl is something else. It’s like an oversized drinking bowl for puppies and even some adult dogs.
Tampons in particular can be deadly to dogs. They do not digest and lodge in the intestines. Call the vet immediately. It will save your pet’s life and potentially thousands of dollars in vet fees. Always keep the bathroom door closed or at least keep the trash covered and the toilet lid down.
Potty Training
This one is a lot more challenging unfortunately but probably the most important tip. Make sure to let your puppy out every hour for the first couple of weeks that you have them. Puppies are like newborns, you have to be up with them around the clock. At night, maybe extend the outside trips to every two hours. This is very important because it will prevent accidents in the house and also reinforce that the puppy must go to the bathroom outside. Each time the puppy goes potty say something like “good outside” to reinforce the puppy is doing the right thing and to build the connection of outside=potty time. After a couple of weeks, your puppy will be able to know when you say time to go outside means it’s time to go potty.
Icky Weather
When it’s raining or just plain gross outside, make sure to have a towel ready for your puppy as soon as it walks inside the house. Wipe off its paws with the towel carefully and completely to prevent paw prints throughout your home. Starting this young might be difficult at first due to the little crazy ball of energy your puppy is, but it will make doing this later much easier. Eventually, your dog will lift up its paws for you because it knows what comes after being outside in the muggy weather.
Appropriate Toys
To prevent messes in the house with a puppy, make sure to have lots of dog toys available for the puppy to play with. Every time the puppy grabs your shoes or something else it shouldn’t have. Take the shoe out of its mouth and give them a dog toy to play with instead. This reinforces that the puppy has its own toys to play with and should not go for things that do not belong to them. Puppies love to shred everything up so if you want to minimize messes, stay away from the fabric and stringy toys or they will end up all over your house.
Food and Water
Many dogs do not clean off their mouths after drinking water and some dogs aren’t the neatest eaters out there. Therefore, buy an enclosed dog mat that catches all the food and water the puppy drops in the process of drinking and eating. There are plastic and silicone ones available that can easily be cleaned off in the sink.
Shedding
Most puppies will lose their baby fur and grow their adult fur as they grow up. This can cause a lot of shedding and fur balls throughout your home. To prevent some of this mess, it is important to brush your puppy at least once a week. Find a brush that fits your puppy best and take the time to carefully brush them. Some puppies will need this done more than others. If you have a very furry dog, you might want to brush them every other day to avoid fur clumps in your hands every time you pet your puppy.
Having a puppy is one of the greatest joys in life so it’s important to make having one as easy on you and your family as possible. These tips can help relieve stress and make both you and the puppy happy. Puppies are people pleasers and when they have regular cleaning patterns in place, they learn very quickly what is expected of them and get accustomed to it.