New Puppy, What Now
For first-time puppy owners in the first six months
You have a new puppy, and it's harder than anyone warned you
A sourced, practical guide to help you work out what is normal, what needs attention, and what can wait this week.
Free three-page PDF. Takes about a minute.
This isn't a training guide. It's for the person already following one who can't work out why it isn't taking. If your puppy isn't learning on the schedule the book promised, the likeliest explanation is that the schedule was never true. We read the studies and veterinary guidance, named every source on the page where it appears, and cut the claims that didn't survive being checked. The guide has a page listing exactly what we cut and why. When the honest answer is that nobody knows, we say so. That isn't a gap in the research. It's the finding.
It's written for the part nobody photographs. The three in the morning potty trip, the biting that seems to be getting worse rather than better, the housetraining that went backwards for no reason, and the quiet worry that you've made a mistake you can't undo. If your puppy is somewhere between eight weeks and six months old and your week is mostly damage control, you're who we write for.
What we make is one guide and two smaller pieces of it. So You Got A New Puppy, What Now? runs seventy one pages across three things: sleep, what your puppy is actually doing and why, and whether you're ruining them. Why Won't My Puppy Sleep? is the sleep half on its own, for when the nights are the whole problem. And the four question guide further down this page is free, because the question it answers is the one people ask at the worst hour of the night.
It's not for everything, and we would rather say so here than let you find out after you've paid. We don't cover aggression, reactivity, resource guarding, separation distress, anything medical or dietary, or any dog with a bite history. Nobody who writes for us is a veterinarian, a certified trainer or a veterinary behaviorist, and the guides say so on their first page. Those things belong with your vet or a qualified force free behavior professional, and we tell you that by name every time one of them comes up.
Is this the puppy blues, or did I make a real mistake?
Four questions that tell the difference. Including the one nobody will answer honestly.
If you're reading this at two in the morning, you already know which question you're actually asking.
You've read the forums. Everyone there is either three days in and delighted, or two years past it and telling you it gets better. Nobody is where you are, tonight, wondering whether the last few weeks were a hard stage or a decision you can't take back.
A 2024 University of Helsinki study surveyed 1,801 dog owners. 45.1% reported significant negative feelings during their dog's puppyhood, and 10.1% described feeling extremely burdened. So if you're quietly ashamed of how hard this feels, you're far from the only owner in that survey who felt it.
And the part almost nobody reports accurately: about eight in ten of those owners said it lasted longer than a month, and 48.8% said six months or more. If you've been waiting for the two-week mark when this was supposed to lift, you were handed a number that doesn't exist. You're not behind schedule. There was no schedule.
This is a free three page guide with four questions in it. It helps you tell a hard stage apart from a wrong decision.
It answers honestly, which means it doesn't promise you that everything is fine. Sometimes the answer is that the fit is wrong. We wrote that part down too.
Tell us where to send it and it arrives in about a minute.
No charge, and nothing to cancel. If it's not useful, one click gets you off the list.
There are three ways in: free, $17, and $49, and none of them commit you to the next one. If you'd rather skip ahead, both paid guides are right here. Why Won't My Puppy Sleep? is the $17 sleep fix and covers the nights on their own, which is the thing most likely to be wrecking your week. So You Got A New Puppy, What Now? is the $49 full system, seventy one pages plus seven printable sheets, including a week by week section telling you what actually can't wait and what you're allowed to ignore. Read about the sleep guide, or read what is in the full guide.