All about your

Puppy Care

Congratulations

On the arrival of your lovely new pup!. Whether this is your first dog or the latest in a long line, you will hopefully find some of this information useful.

Diet

We recommend feeding your new pup puppy food four times daily until 12 weeks of age, three times daily until six months, then either once or twice daily after that.

Generally, it is probably better to feed dogs twice daily, especially if your dog is a bigger breed. Progress onto junior diets at the age recommended by the manufacturer and do the same when your pup becomes an adult.

In some individuals, products containing milk can cause diarrhoea so avoid them if this happens.

Vaccinations

We recommend vaccinating your puppy when they are six to eight weeks old with a second dose at 10 weeks old.

Your puppy will be fully covered one week after the second vaccination.

We recommend you avoid walking your pup in places where there will be dogs with unknown vaccination histories, such as busy parks or roads, until after this time. Because of the risk of rats spreading leptospirosis in urine you should also avoid ponds and riverbanks for the same period.

Insurance

We recommend that you consider pet insurance for your new puppy and it is ideal to take out insurance as soon as you get them home. If your puppy is unwell the last thing you want to worry about is how to pay for treatment.

We can link you up with an insurance company to provide a free month of cover to get you started.

Worming

We recommend that you worm your pup monthly until they are six months old then every three months after that for routine worm control.

However, we are in a high lungworm incidence area.

Lungworm is spread by slugs and snails which your puppy can swallow when playing with them or even when eating grass. Therefore we recommend using a monthly treatment that protects against lungworm as well as routine worms.

Many standard wormers are not effective against lungworm. Lungworm can cause lung problems, but also can affect the brain, causing fits and other neurological problems, and also affect blood clotting.

Tapeworms are not such a big problem in this area. Dogs become infected by eating raw meat or by ingesting fleas so they are more likely to be seen in dogs that hunt, eat raw food, or have fleas.

Tapeworms are more of a risk in other areas so if you travel abroad or to Wales or Scotland with your dog you should treat for tapeworms.

Biting and Chewing

All pups will bite with their needle-sharp teeth! It’s important they learn about bite inhibition.

We recommend that when a pup bites or nips anyone, that person should give a short, sharp yelp and ignore them for 20 seconds or so. After this time they can go back to them, praising them if they are not biting.

The pup can also be handed an appropriate toy that it can chew on instead of the human! If the pup keeps biting after you go back to it, then a short time out is sensible.

All pups will chew so make sure that your pup has access to appropriate toys. Check these toys regularly for damage, and make sure anything that you don’t want to be chewed is out of reach.

House Training

Allow lots of opportunity for your pup to be successful by letting them out often, especially after meals and when they wake up.

Look for tell-tale sniffing around as a sign they want to go out. Use a specific word or phrase when they start to sniff around outside and you can use this later if you need to encourage your dog to go at a particular time.

Give lots of praise when they are successful.

Neutering

We recommend female dogs should be neutered at six months of age, or two to four months after a season. The ideal time is at six months old because this dramatically decreases the risk of mammary tumours in later life and also means that there is no risk of pregnancy during the first season.

Microchipping

It is compulsory by law for all dogs to be microchipped by eight weeks of age.

We can implant a microchip at any age during a normal appointment.