First Time Puppies: Week 5-8 Supplies
This is likely your last major stretch with your puppies before they go home (most breeds go home somewhere between 8-12 weeks). There are definitely some changes you may need to make to your setup and especially to your scheduling.
If you used our DIY Puppy Pen, you will likely need to make it larger. We are lucky that it is summer time and we have five kids home, so we only use the pen as their sleeping and confinement area (when needed, like night) and the rest of the time they roam the house or yard with oversight. With six English Goldens, their 8x4 pen is perfect for chilling but not large enough for longer stints during the day when they are active. You would likely need to extend it to be closer to 8x8 or even 8x12. There’s a reason breeders tend to have large buildings for their kennels!
This is your prime training time, so if you haven’t started, you will want to be doing that consistently (daily if possible). You will need a clicker, highly desirable treats (we use cut up hotdogs), and a plan to: load the clicker (create a Pavlovian response), click for manding, click for following commands, etc. This is also a time you want your dogs to have the most experiences possible to get comfortable with it. The more objects, noises, and odd experiences, the better.
Toys are still helpful, but especially chewing items. Your puppies, just like young toddlers, are in an oral phase, and everything goes in the mouth. It isn’t easy to get them to not chew, but you can redirect them to chew on the things you want!
You will want to have a schedule at this point. Your puppies are much like an infant, and the more you keep them on a schedule, the better they are. Our puppies’ schedule looks like this:
5:30 AM - Wake up (yep…it hurts!)
Potty immediately after coming out, Awake 20-30 minutes, potty again, Awake 20-30, Sleep (back in pen…potty again if they don’t go to sleep easily). The awake times continue to grow as you more from week 5 to 8.
9:30-10PM - Down for the night in their pen with food, water, and pee pads.
With this schedule, our puppies no longer poop in the pen, and only pee on the pads if they need to go overnight. For the most part, we have almost no pees in the house (but it does happen…yay for hardwood floors!).
You will want to be thinking about your going home process. Applications, going home packets, contracts, bills of sale, etc. You will also likely want to step-up your advertising (AKC website, Puppy.com, word of mouth, etc).
Of all things, you will want to allocate more time. While the first week was exhausting with 24/7 watching, in this stage you move back into watching and interacting often (as a responsible breeder should) to ensure the puppies are getting good socialization, training, and are ready to head to a forever home well adjusted an happy!
