Episode #266 The First Few Days — Bonding, Potty & Crate Basics

Bringing home a new puppy? 🐶 The first few days can feel exciting, overwhelming, and a little exhausting — all at once. In this episode, Amy walks you through exactly what to focus on (and what not to stress about) during those critical early days.

You’ll learn how to:

• Build trust and create a strong bond from Day One
• Set up a potty routine that prevents accidents before they happen
• Introduce the crate in a way that builds confidence — not fear
• Avoid common first-week mistakes that slow progress
• Create structure that helps your puppy feel safe and secure

Amy shares simple, practical tips you can implement immediately — including hand-feeding for connection, the 5-minute potty rule, and the 10-second crate-building method.

If you want calmer days, fewer accidents, and a puppy who sees you as their safe place, this episode is your step-by-step starter guide.

Whether you're on Day One or Week One, this is the foundation that sets everything else up for success.

Hit play and start strong. 🐾

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Roadmap

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Today we are talking about bonding with our puppy in the first few days, setting up potty training the right way, and create basics that will build confidence, not fear. Welcome to the puppy training podcast. I'm Amy Jensen, founder of Baxter and Bella, the online puppy school. Here we are all about helping you create the best possible experience raising a puppy. From training tips to practical tricks, all aimed at fostering a happy, well-behaved dog who truly feels like part of the family. So if you are ready to enjoy the journey and strengthen the bond with your dog, let's get started. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Puppy Training Podcast. I'm excited you're here because today's episode is something super important. It's getting started with a brand new puppy or a brand new dog that's coming to join your family. So this is really important. If you've just brought home a new puppy or a new dog, or you're about to, you're prepping, this episode is your roadmap. We're going to talk about the bonding and the potty training and the crate training basics, and all of these things are going to really make a big difference in your dog's first few days home. So these first few days matter. They are going to set the tone for your puppy's trust, learning, and their long-term behavior. So here's the good news: you don't need to do everything perfectly. Just let that go right now. Just send that one right out the door. Take a deep breath. You just need to have a plan and be intentional. So part one today is bonding, building trust from day one. I love to start here because to me and to uh all of us here at Baxter Umbella, trust and relationship is so big. The first few days are not about getting your dog to do everything you say right away. And it's not about perfection. It's literally about relationship. Your puppy has just left their littermates. So imagine what this is like, right? Uh their breeder's home or shelter or family, wherever they just came from, everything familiar to them is now gone. So imagine moving to a brand new country where you don't speak the language and you don't know anyone. That's what it feels like to your puppy. So what is your job? Your job for this puppy is to be safe, to be predictable, and to be kind. So tip number one is to keep your puppies or dogs' world small to start with. So for the first three to five days, I limit visitors, I limit overwhelming things or outings, experiences. I keep them in one main area of the house. I call it my puppy's Zenden. This is their exercise pen that's attached to their crate. It has their food and water bowl, their toys, their bed. It's their new living space. And this is going to prevent overstimulation and also build security, a sense of safety for our dogs. So think cozy, calm, structured. All right. The other tip I have for you is to hand feed this puppy or dog. Now, this is great. It's a great way to get them to try to do behaviors. You can see what they'll follow food for. Um, you can offer just even sit by them and do some body handling or some touching of them if they like that and feed them out of your hand. It's a great way to bond. Now, some of your puppies or dogs are not going to want to eat right away. It's because they're too stressed. Do not panic. This is pretty normal. But in the first few days, it's a good idea to try to hand feed one of their meals. So while you do this, you can say their name, you can gently touch their paws or their ears or their collar. You can reward when they look at you. You're trying to teach them that humans are good, that uh handling is safe, and that that's going to build trust faster. Okay. Now, if your puppy doesn't love the touching, then that's not going to be helpful. So you do have to kind of read your puppy. And if they're a little nervous or anxious, then I like to sit on the floor, hands in my lap, no reaching. I let that puppy come to me if they want to. All right. Uh another tip I have is the three-second rule for play. So when playing or touching or petting, right, do this for three to five seconds. I want you to pause and see if your puppy re-engages with you. If they come back to you, they're wanting that connection. If they don't, they might be a little overwhelmed and they need a little break. And we need to listen to that and respond to that. So you're teaching your puppy or your dog that choosing you keeps the fun going. And if they do, in fact, like that little back scratch or they like that you're playing with this toy with them, they'll come back to you. Okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about is potty training. This is a big one because your puppy's going to have to potty right away. And they're going to have to potty a lot in that very first day home. In fact, that first week, you literally feel like you're just doing potty trips in and out, in and out, in and out. If you have a young puppy. If you have an older dog that you're acquiring or getting, it's not going to be quite like that. But if you have a brand new puppy, they don't wear diapers and they have to go to the bathroom. So we have to figure this out from the get-go. We want to make this very positive, very low stress for our puppies. So potty training success is about management. It's not about intelligence on the part of our dog, okay? Puppies are not stubborn, they just don't know what to do in a human house. And that's okay, that's expected. So here's your potty schedule rule. The first week, I want you to take them out first thing in the morning, after your puppy eats, after your puppy drinks, after your puppy plays, when they wake up from a nap or a sleep before going to bed. And then other than that, just every 30 to 60 minutes during awake time. And it is frequent. Some of you it's going to be 20 to 30 minutes. Some of you it's going to be 45 to 60 minutes. It's going to depend depend on your puppy, their bladder, the bladder strength. Um, a lot of factors go into that. But it is frequent and it is worth it. So again, first thing in the morning after eating, after drinking, after playing, anytime the activity changes, really, take your puppy out to the potty spot. Okay, take them outside on a leash or put them in an exercise pen, like a potty pen. Here's why. Sometimes if you go outside and you just leave your puppy off leash, or they're just in this big yard that they can roam around, they get easily distracted. So I try to keep my puppy in a smaller area. And again, this will depend on where you live and what your living space looks like or your yard space looks like. We want this to be a private area where other dogs are not roaming. Um, and we're going to help our puppy focus on the fact that we're out here to go potty. So I like to stand still. I say go potty. They're not going to know what that means initially, but you can just start saying that phrase so they get used to it. And then I wait. If they go, great. Throw a party, don't scare them. But praise, um, happy. We are super glad that this event happened, right? And a big celebration, whatever that might look like, and feed them a food reward. So a little piece of freeze-dried liver goes a long way. And when I say little, I mean little, like half the size of your pinky fingernail. Just a little morsel of goodness for going potty. If they don't go, don't panic, don't stress, just bring them back inside for five to ten minutes, supervise them closely, and then try again. Again, in this time period, no free roaming if they had a failed potty trip. If they didn't go potty, they cannot just come in and run around your house, okay? Has to be supervised, small space. You can put them back in their exercise pen or their crate and then try again in five to ten minutes. Once they've had a success, my rule is they must potty to play. Okay. Now, here's what not to do when we talk about house trading. Do not punish accidents. Do not rub your puppy's nose in it. Do not yell. Do not grab the newspaper. We don't even have newspapers anymore, do we? Do people get the newspaper anymore? But it used to be that we'd hit ourselves on the head with a newspaper and say, hey, watch your puppy more closely. We do not touch the dog, okay? If you catch your puppy mid-accident, I just want you to clap your hands or say, oops, make make a loud noise that's not scaring the puppy, but it startles them a little bit enough that they kind of stop what they're doing. They'll be like, whoa, what's that? And then they we can quickly carry them outside. Okay, if you find it later, guess what? All you can do is clean it up. So use an enzymatic cleaner, move on with your day. No drama, just data and a reminder to yourself, I've got to do better watching my puppy and taking them out more often. Okay, let's talk crates. The crate, you guys, is not puppy gel. It is your puppy's bedroom. We can create crates to be positive. We can. We can create them to be safe bedrooms for our puppy where our puppies actually love to go. When it's bedtime at my house, guys, and I ask my dogs, are you ready for bed? Guess what? They go put themselves in. Doors open, but they'll go. That's where they want to go. That's where their bed is, that's where their favorite chew is. Um, we've made it a very positive thing for our dogs. So crates are simply a management tool to help our puppies be successful with house training. But we do have to introduce it correctly and we do have to use it correctly. The first day, toss food rewards inside the crate. Let your puppy walk in and out. Don't close the door. You can feed their meals in the crate. You can give them good chews in the crate. We're not going to force it, we're not going to shove them in, we're not going to shut the door immediately. We want to build some value first. And then we're going to start closing the door, but just for a few seconds, and we are super close by. So we're going to close the door, drop a little food reward inside, open it before they start to fuss, and let them out again. And maybe at that point we take a little break, we go play, and we'll revisit it. So randomly throughout the day, just revisit going in and out of the crate, closing the door for a few seconds, um, leaving it open. Now, when your puppy starts to get tired, that's when we want to uh settle them inside their crate, sit really close next to them, help comfort them, and see if we can get them to fall asleep in there and take a nap in there. So we're going to gradually increase the time they spend in there, you know, the first time you introduce it, just a second to 10 seconds, to 30 seconds, to a minute, to three minutes. And, you know, by the end of that first day, hopefully they have taken a nap in there for a longer period of time. Recognize that puppies need 18 to 20 hours of sleep a day. That's a lot. So if they're getting bitey and wild and zoomy, guess what? They're probably tired. So we can place them in the crate with a soft chew, some soft bedding if they want it. Maybe if they're scratching at it and pushing it out of the way, they don't want it. So pay attention to that. Create a nice calm environment and sit right next to them. And most puppies will fall asleep within minutes. So overtired puppies look like naughty puppies, but they're just exhausted toddlers. And they might need a little help settling down. So here's something important. Your puppy, again, remember this for the first week, right? I want you to have a mindset shift, if you will. Your puppy is not giving you a hard time. They're not trying to be hard. They're not trying to be naughty. They are having a hard time, right? The biting, the whining, the accidents, it's all communication that they are a little stressed. Their environment has drastically changed. You are very new to them, and they're trying to decide if where they currently are is a safe place. So when we approach these behaviors with curiosity instead of frustration, we're going to help our puppy settle in more quickly and feel safe around us. And that is a game changer. Now, if you want something concrete to follow, here it is. Day one, we're going to keep their environment very small. We're going to start to introduce the crate positively. We're going to begin that potty schedule and try to hand feed one meal. On day two, let's practice more short crate sessions. Let's reward calm behavior and again try to get them to fall asleep and nap in that crate area. Day three, we're going to increase crate duration slightly. Add uh three to five minute little mini training sessions if they're starting to be motivated by food or food reward food or toys or play. You might not be able to do that on day three. That might come a few days later, but go ahead and try it and see what happens. And then continue with that just very scheduled, routine potty management schedule, okay? Consistency beats intensity. So remember that. Now, the first few days you guys can feel overwhelming. You might wonder, did I make a mistake? Why is this so hard? Will it always be like this? I promise you it won't. You're trying to build structure, and that's going to build confidence. Confidence is going to build calm. And calm is going to lead to connection, which is what we're wanting with our dogs. All right, you guys, you can do this. If you need a pep talk, join my program, Baxterambella.com. That's the website. Become a member. We offer three live QAs every week. So on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, you can jump on and talk to uh me or one of my team, and we will answer any puppy dog training question you have. We just, and it's fun because you're in a group setting, you get to hear everyone else's questions. You get to chime in if you want. There's no pressure. Um, you're not on video. Uh, so just come join the call, ask your questions. We'd love to help you out. Have a good week, you guys. Happy training. Thanks for tuning in to the puppy training podcast. I hope today's tips help you feel more confident and excited about raising your dog. Remember, with a little patience and consistency, you can create a loving bond and a well-behaved pup who's a joy to have in your family. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with fellow puppy parents. For more resources, visit Baxter and Bella online. Until next time, happy training.