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Is there anything more exciting and joyful than bringing home a new puppy or dog? If you’re anything like us at Sunnyside Pet Hospital, the only thing that compares is getting home a new cat or kitten. First, however, it is essential to set house rules for your new pup to ensure they transition easily into your home.

Why You Should Always Set Rules for Your Puppy or Dog

When getting a new dog or puppy, it is vital to set rules and guidelines with your family immediately. Doing so can:

  • Help create care rules that your family can consistently follow
  • Produce a consistent household in which a dog can thrive
  • Teach your puppy necessary lessons
  • Minimize “accidents” and poor behavior

Think of your new dog as a child who doesn’t know proper behavior rules and needs a little help adjusting to your new home. Dogs react well to limitations and restrictions and crave them, like children, and you and your family can help them thrive by creating consistent and effective house rules.

Setting Your House Rules

Now that you know why it is important to create rules and boundaries for your dogs, it is time to start setting house rules. Again, this process is something that the whole family needs to get involved with and includes:

  • Deciding Which Rules are Important: Sit down with your family and determine what house rules you want to create for your pup. These should include things like general behavior guidelines, like when and where they eat, to bathroom rules for the puppy.
  • Agreeing on Your House Guidelines: The hardest part is getting everyone to agree with your rules. You shouldn’t be a dictator here. Let everyone pitch in with ideas and hold a vote to create your guidelines. Then, write down the rules everyone agrees with to create your care standards.
  • Coming Up With Enforcement Standards: How do you plan on enforcing these rules with your family? How strict are you going to be with your rules? It is best to stick to them as closely as possible. Dogs love structure and need you to guide them in this way.
  • Working With Your Puppy: The fantastic thing about dogs is that they’re intelligent enough to pick up on rules and guidelines immediately. However, you need patience and consistency with your dog until these lessons are learned. Positive reinforcement is the best guide here.

When creating rules, you need to think about many guidelines. A few rules to consider include:

  • Where your puppy can go
  • Whether they can get on the furniture
  • How each family member contributes to care
  • Morning, afternoon, and evening routines
  • Sleep schedules for the pup
  • If they get food scraps or not
  • Which commands you want to teach

We Can Help You

At Sunnyside Pet Hospital, our team of animal experts can help you when training your puppy. We can also provide vaccinations, general checkups, and dietary help that lets your pup grow into a balanced adult.