and the for calm down things like that and said obviously is a good one because i want to see it when i feed him i want a settlement but he's calling him things like that so these are just the very basic beginning foundations he is a puppy  we're here at lloyd's animal medical center we're going to be bringing in our puppy still we to get his first appointment of what will be several appointments as a puppy and learn everything we need to know about owning a poppy we're going to be meeting with dr chris she is one of the best so come inside with us and let's meet stewie and find out what it takes to own a poppy good right starting to get some big teeth in any problems with eating is he a good eater as he he's a very good eater and drinker and i would say that he goes to the bathroom about fifteen minutes after he gets good that's good timing ones are pretty good we do occasionally if we have a very very small poppy actually recommend many feedings because they can get low blood sugars but he's a pretty bulky fella so i don't think you have to worry about that because i think you like your food and that's my guess right now when you take him outdoors do you take him out frequently or do you just take him out after he eats we have other dogs so he's out frequently going to probably a total of four or five hours a day in short bursts runaround all right and you have an enclosed yard yes that i don't want to ever have these guys either off of a leash or out of an enclosed yard because puppies are not the brightest at this age so they are programmed to explore everything and anything and they will get into all sorts of trouble if you do not keep them training for him we are doing it for everything good excellent and we are working on down good as well and we're doing the name game so he's responding to his name many people make the mistake of thinking puppies are not able to learn these types of behaviors the quicker and earlier start them the better it becomes part of their routine for life what they learn in their first six months is the behavioral pattern that they have basically for life so you really want to get these things in these you're doing right away many people try to wait until they're what do you do when you're not home with him he is crated excellent when you break though it's like a gigantic palace for him because it's a large dog crate how you like that do you doesn't have any problems going the bathroom in the crate no he's pretty good about it extended per tens of an accident but most of the time from the time that he's in the wheelchair good riddance generally speaking i try to keep the crates pretty small for so that they don't buy the bathroom but he's doing fine and what you've got so that's working fine for him i have a lot of people who try these many many dogs in a really big trade and they'll poop in one corner and then just go sleep in the other corner which doesn't really give them any negative reinforcement for going so but he's obviously spot little puppy here because of the other dogs i think he's falling into a understands that that behavior is the one that you want and going back to keeping him cannot did to you i have a lot of people have dogs really well trained for coming on the porch because they watch them and they go to the bathroom and then they go puppy good puppy and by the time they get to them they blocked up two steps and they're getting rewarded for walking up the steps as opposed to going to the bathroom which really isn't all that important to them they'd much rather chase a butterfly those things are much more exciting in the house is he getting into anything like wires you have them all to put away fortunately because we have a small child in the home we were somewhat puppy proof to i definitely see that he's tending toward the computer area where the wires are so we've had to be more cautious and anything small and shiny definitely attract his attention so  these and look your room from their viewpoint because you won't realize things are hanging from underneath tables and chairs and that the cord can be seen under that corner where you wouldn't see it from up above so you really want to see what they see because they will go after anything that they can see there at that point where they're supposed to explore their environment and mom is usually the one that would be there to protect them your mom now and it's up to us to make sure that is a safe environment and they can get into trouble with a remarkably small things  definitely any kind of toys and one of my dogs actually tried to eat the the dog bowl was succeeding quite well so we had to take that away from him so they will chew on almost anything at this stage the good news is most of that chewing behavior does go away it's a know what we do here is we set you up sort of with a number of different points you start out with your first puppy appointment usually around eight weeks eight to ten weeks that's where they get their first at the shops or distemper usually we examine them get them start on heartworm medication which is heartworm is a disease passed by mosquitoes in this area and there's a preventative that you use once a month year round they'll help them prevent them from getting that we talk about flea and tick control at that time because we have lots of problems with those as well that's also a once a month medication they come in at twelve weeks for the next set of vaccinations and then it's sixteen weeks of their final set our core vaccines here are distemper lymes and rabies those three all dogs we recommend getting there are other vaccines if you're boarding but those are not ones that every dog has to have already and if we ever want to do playgroup playgroup day care anytime they're around any other dogs they should have those those are usually vaccines for respiratory recommend highly training classes for all puppies anyway so most of them will get it but they're not core for every single dog at the sixteen week appointment we set up the neutered spayed which for us is usually right around six months so a couple months after that and it's important for both boys and girls this day and age with leash laws and people with enclosed yards these dogs aren't out making lots of babies but there's a lot of health risk with the boys in the girls so it is really really important to get it done know is there some truth to in a male  they will be if i have a neutered and yes and no depends on the individual dog if you've got a hyperactive dog you're not going to turn them into a very placid dog by neutering them but if you get rid of those hormones that are circulating they're not going to be as anxious they're not going to be marking their territory they're not going to be getting to as much trouble so it's not going to be a huge difference but it can certainly tone down things like dr dog aggression territoriality and things like that which in this day and age with people coming and going it's important not to have those behaviors be more intense than you can possibly avoid think we've put in sleep yet you board and for the group as we recommend trying to get them spayed before they go into heat because the chance of getting breast cancer increases if we don't get it within that very specific time period so we try to set up all of your appointments one by one so you so the first six months of a poppy is a lot of work but we try to keep you sort of in the loop for the first six months and then after dogs puppies aren't as breakable as you think but they are somewhat fragile this small but i'd probably be lifting up and down for a little bit longer at least until he's like three months older so you're not always going to win that battle because sometimes they're just going to jump up and down on their own and not going to catch them but most of the time with these little guys there they're a little bit more durable but you do have to be careful one of the main things that i worry about with small dogs believe or not a reclining chairs because they can actually get into the corners or get under them and you open it and they're stuck in it so i've seen a number of small breed dogs get caught up in incline chairs so just be careful you should and ways know where your property is and my rule of thumb with puppies in a house is don't do anything with a puppy you would do with a one year old if you would not leave your one year old walking around or crawling around your living room when you went into the other room or went up to take a shower didn't leave you poppy put them in a crate the crate is a safety factor for me as much as anything else it keeps them out of trouble they can get into trouble in an instant the things that they can eat or chew or hurt themselves on it's just it's amazing number of things and we want to keep them safe because they will certainly get into trouble otherwise now what about socialization with him in terms children and our different things are exposed to in the first six months the more things are familiar with puppies by the age of six months is the equivalent of a person being about nineteen or twenty years old they've gone through a lot of learning and after that  their social behavior is somewhat set so they should definitely go out places with people they should go to puppy training classes and under guidance you don't want to just let them go running around other dogs because you're just asking for them to get bitten but having them in a class or take them to a to a ball field on a leash things like that are all really important for this kind of puppy i just saw a puppy recently that's a very nervous poppy if you did that to that particular dog she would be much more fearful so you have to take it much more slow with her you couldn't just take her to the park you can take her for a walk around the edge of the park where nobody is and you have to slowly get her more and more confident the more confident your puppy is in the first six months and the better dog should be excuse me  now we've gone through the first six months of his life so now talk to me about the next six months so i'm not in the early for weeks now i'm going to be my kind of old women what are some things at home that i can keep an eye on the first thing you look at was his teeth and of course he's go years every every dad at this age i recommend that they get used to having their teeth brushed in their puppies i just use my thumb or a gauze pad because dental disease is one of our major problems as they get older and you are going to be needing to clean the teeth at home as much as possible same thing with ears a lot of dogs get ear infections i try to get them used to having my hands in their ears i give him a cookie if they're like he's not he's not sure about it so he's the one that would get a nice little reward for being good at same thing with toes you're going to be trimming those nails pretty frequently or somebody is and you want it to be something that's not a traumatic experience everything that you do with a poppy that you can get them used to it this is a it's going to make their life and your life a lot easier so anything that you can do you should be able to put your hands in their food take their food away they shouldn't show any kind of aggression with that yesterday you should be able to pretty much touch him anywhere turn him upside down do anything and have him be comfortable and confident that nothing's going to happen to him no big rounded heads and it makes him very cute because his eyes are pushed out in the sockets a little bit more it's a lot harder for it to drain as long as it's clear and i do recommend cleaning it twice a day morning and night with what was like a cotton ball of water just to keep any discharge from if you're here and then we recommend stool sample at least every year if you're noticing any worms of any sort then you should come earlier some warms like tapeworms are actually passed by ingesting a fleece so it can indicate that you may have a flea problem if you see that doesn't mean you do but it's potentially a possibility roundworms of the long ones look like spaghetti many of the parasites that we see in dogs are not visual you can't see them you can't see a hook worm a whip worm you can see ge those are all very common parasites that we see in puppies and adult dogs and so a stool samples essential is part of what we do every year with them now what about bathing he's a puppy and as i'm petting him he's shedding a little normally  the dog when they're dirty or smelly unless they have some sort of medical reason then i tend to use baby shampoo you can wash them every week if you had to i don't want to use a very harsh shampoo but on a mild shampoos somebody like him it's pretty easy you can get him in the sink some of the bigger dogs are a little more difficult and it is also a good idea to teach them the commands of getting into the tub and getting out so it's not so much of a fight i do recommend with a small breed especially coming into winter that you dry them with to have to pay attention to what he likes i definitely would first dog of this size at least get the shovel out and even some pads to go on and i have a pomeranian she just disappears when she walks into the snow you can't find her and she gets huge balls if he doesn't mind wearing something you're welcome to put on a jacket my pomerania hates it but we do it anyway because she gets literally huge snowballs in her fur in terms of booties i don't use booties most of the time unless i know i'm going to be walking someplace where they're go be salts and things like that and that's a protection and that's another thing to get them used too early if you think you're going to need to do it get him used to having them on you're not going to be very successful the first time you take a put him on is in the middle of the winter on a dog who's six months old enclosed area so i don't need to microchip them right or should always microchip you never know what's going to happen we've had dogs that have been in the local supermarket in their cars that have been stolen broken into and stolen the only way we can identify a dog at this point is with a microchip and when we have a new dog brought in specially a stray but we try to do it on any new adult dog will check for a microchip and i have found more in cats and dogs but i have certainly found animals that have been lost through microchip they're benign they never cause any pride never seen an animal have a bad reaction to one of them and it is the only way you can be sure of getting your dog back now inserting a microchip sounds like a big deal and they're at the size of a grain of rice yet how invasive is the procedure it's not we tend to recommend doing it at the time they're spayed and neutered just because the needles a little bit larger but we do in many awake dogs and they tolerate a fine it's just like giving a vaccine it's given in the same area which is right on the skin by the shoulder blades and they don't have any problems with it at all so another program of the absolutely or the worst case scenario you never know what's going to happen all it takes is the wrong door to open at the wrong time and him to shoot out in you may not find  off i mean this is not on him very well and so out of this is never a bad idea to have your name or their name on it so they do know but if they lose it a microchip is is permanent and it's not going to fall off i mean if you got his head caught in a fence