3 Puppy Mistakes to Avoid

Welcoming a new puppy (or older dog) into your home is a time of excitement, nervousness, and oftentimes, stress! While you will certainly make mistakes along the way (and that's okay), here are 3 mistakes you should try to avoid! And not only will avoiding these mistakes make YOUR life easier, but they will also help your pup live a happy and healthier life as well. Mistake #1 - Potty Training Overconfidence One of the first things you likely think of when training a new puppy is potty training. Because let's face it, no one wants their carpets, rugs, and floors ruined! And often in the first couple of weeks, you are on top of the potty training! You set timers, take your pup out frequently, reward good potty breaks outside, etc... And then, overconfidence creeps in! You might start to get lazy with setting timers, and you might generally start to feel that your puppy has the hang of potty training. And inevitably, accidents will start to occur again! One of the biggest puppy mistakes you can make is to get overconfident with your pup's potty training abilities! While there isn't a hard and fast rule, I would say that your pup isn't fully potty trained until he/she hasn't had an accident in the home for 3 months. Yup, 3 months. Again, learn from my mistakes and don't become overconfident with your dog's potty training abilities. Stick to a schedule, be adamant about potty breaks, and continue to reward the right behavior to avoid accidents in the home! Mistake #2 - Expecting Your Puppy to "Outgrow" Behaviors You've likely heard people say something like "oh, they're just a puppy... they'll outgrow that". Ahhh, what a mistake! While there are behaviors and things your pup will become better at naturally over time, you can NOT expect them to just outgrow behaviors.  Every behavior that your pup might struggle with needs training. You must put in the work. And while it's true that an older dog will often mellow out and become less hyper, that doesn't mean they will magically outgrow things like puppy nipping, potty accidents, or poor recall. Don't plan on your pup just outgrowing something, work on it and train it!  Mistake #3 - Giving Too Much Freedom While this mistake is similar to mistake #1, there is a bit of a difference. I can still remember this costly mistake like it was yesterday... Our puppy Sunny had started to do really well with not chewing up objects. She had started to learn what was and wasn't okay to have in her mouth. And let me tell you, we were feeling GREAT about that! Fast forward a few days and we brought home a new custom table for the nook area of our home. It was a beautiful piece of woodwork honestly. And, of course, it just so happened that we had a lot going on that day and had to leave Sunny for a little bit longer than usual without supervision. Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened... We gave Sunny too much freedom and she chewed up the edge of our brand new table. We were FURIOUS. But whose fault was that? Sunny's? Certainly not... she was still a puppy and had never ever been left alone around a nice tasty wood table. We made the mistake of thinking she was 'better' than she really was with chewing objects, and we gave her too much freedom. Not a fun lesson to learn! And this type of situation can be applied to off-leash behavior especially. I can almost promise you that if you think your puppy's recall is good enough for off-leash behavior, that means you should wait at least 3 more months. While mistakes are inevitable (and part of the process), I hope you can learn from these mistakes that I made as a new pup parent! Need help training your new pup? Download the FREE Pupford app here!