The Complete Puppy Care Guide: Feeding, Training, Vaccination, Puppy-Proofing and More

Bringing a puppy home? Congratulations! These little bundles of joy are equal parts funny and adorable, mixed with some occasional mischief. The period when you bring a puppy home is extra important, as their initial socialisation can shape their behaviour, daily habits, and lifestyle. If you’re a first-time pet owner, this will be a learning period for you too. Learning about a puppy’s feeding and vaccinations is important to keep your new friend healthy. Socialising them properly from a young age helps weed out troublesome behaviour before it has a chance to develop, too. 

Whether you’re bringing home your first puppy or your fifth, this puppy care guide covers the essential steps for puppy care, including vaccinations, socialisation, training, and daily care. 

What to Buy Before Bringing a Puppy Home

Before you bring a puppy home, there are a few essentials that will help settle in comfortably and stay safe. Having these essentials on hand will make the first few days far easier for the two of you. 

• Food and water bowls
• Age-appropriate puppy food
• A comfortable bed or sleeping mat
• A collar or harness with a leash
• An ID tag with your contact details
• A pet microchip for permanent identification
• Safe chew toys for teething
• Basic grooming essentials, such as a brush, pet shampoo, and nail clippers
• Poop bags and an enzyme-based cleaner for easy clean-up after accidents
• A properly sized crate

Puppy Feeding Schedule 

A puppy’s feeding schedule depends on their breed. Different puppy breeds need different amounts of food based on their growth rate, metabolism, and average adult size. As a general rule of thumb, puppies have smaller stomachs and high energy needs, meaning they need small and frequent meals. 

This table covers medium dog breeds, including popular breeds like Pariahs/Indies, Beagles, and Cocker Spaniels. 

Most puppies can safely move to adult food once they grow to 80% of their expected adult size. Smaller breeds typically reach this mark between 10 and 12 months, while larger breeds can take up to 24 months. If your puppy is losing weight rapidly, consult your vet immediately. 

Puppy Socialisation and Its Importance 

Socialisation is the process of learning to live and behave in a socially acceptable manner. Puppy socialisation is done for the same reason: to help them learn how to function and participate in their environment. It’s best done around 3-12 weeks of age, as their brain can easily learn how to interact with people, other animals, and their surroundings during this period.

During the socialisation period, a pet parent will try to expose their pup to multiple stimuli like other people, loud noises, environments, or simple grooming like nail-cutting. This helps desensitise the pup and helps them understand and acclimate to their surroundings and the items in it, and prevents any fearfulness once fully grown. 

Here are a few things a puppy can become comfortable with once socialised: 

• People (both inside the household and out in the world)
• New sights and smells 
• New objects 
• Other dogs and new animals 
• New materials and surfaces (like glass doors and tables)

Puppy Vaccinations & Vaccination Schedule in India 

Each puppy requires something called a core set of vaccinations. Since no two countries have identical conditions, vaccination types and schedules are tailored to
diseases that may be more prevalent in a country. Such vaccinations are known as core vaccines for pets. 

Here’s the puppy core vaccination schedule in India 

While missing a dose doesn’t mean you’ll need to start over, the missed dose will leave a gap during which your pup will not be protected. Until your pup has completed their core vaccination schedule, they should not visit parks, boarding facilities, or any areas visited by unknown or stray dogs. 

Your puppy’s health and vaccination records are also important if you plan to travel with them. Depending on your destination, you may be asked to provide proof of vaccination, complete vaccination records, and tests like a rabies titer test before your pet is allowed to travel across borders. 

Puppy Teething and How to Manage It 

Puppy teething is a normal developmental stage during which they lose their baby teeth and grow their adult sets, usually between 3-7 months of age. During this stage, your pup may want to chew endlessly on clothes, shoes, furniture, and other household objects. 

Puppies explore the world with their mouths, so a little nip while playing isn't a sign of aggression. However, if the chewing becomes endless, you can try to:

• Keep chew toys nearby and redirect their mouth to a toy instead of your hand.
• Avoid rough hand-wrestling games, since they encourage biting as play.
• Puppies who are overtired bite more, so a nap can calm things down faster than a training session.

Early training is also important to ensure their playful nipping and teasing phase doesn’t turn into a habit and destructive chewing further down the line. Provided you’re training and socialising your pet, the biting phase should usually settle down once teething ends and their adult teeth have set into the jaw. 

Puppy Training and Its Importance 

Pet training helps an owner establish a line of communication between themselves and their pet, as it gives them the tools to get their pet to perform a desired behaviour and teaches the pet how to respond correctly. It also helps build mutual trust. Basic puppy training, which includes following basic commands such as sit, stand, roll, walk, and run,  should begin at an early age of 3-4 months. This ensures a proper foundation is laid by you and is beneficial when it is time to teach them advanced and more complex commands. 

When training your puppy, only use positive reinforcement and reward-based methods. Reward-based training uses rewards whenever your pet does something you want them to do. Treats, belly rubs, or other pet-pleasing actions are used to reinforce that behaviour was good. For example, if your pup sits once when prompted to “sit”, reward that behaviour with a treat or some love. Eventually they’ll come to associate the action with the reward and sit on command. 

Similarly, your pup should understand there are consequences for undesirable behaviour. As an example, a pet that likes to hop up to welcome people when they come home can be risky if someone afraid of dogs is visiting. To teach them otherwise, don't welcome or accommodate them when they hop up. Instead, simply pivot and back out the door, and repeat until the pet stops hopping up as a greeting. Whenever your pup doesn’t hop up, give them the treat, and repeat the process until they no longer demonstrate this behaviour when you come in. 

Unmanaged behaviours that are left unchecked, leash pulling, for instance, eventually continue and worsen over time. An untrained adult pet can display behavioural issues simply because they were never shown the right way to behave, making puppy training extra important. 

Conclusion

Raising a puppy is not a one-day process, nor will you get every single detail right the first time around. It's as much a learning experience for you as it is for your puppy. With patience, consistency, proper nutrition, regular veterinary care, and plenty of positive training, your puppy will grow into a happy, healthy companion. As they grow, their needs will change too, so continue learning and adapting your routine to give them the best possible care at every stage of life.