Bringing your adopted yorkie puppy home for the first time can be quite overwhelming. Here are a few helpful tips.
1. First of all, dog food. Find out at the place you adopting your yorkie from what kind of dog food your puppy have been fed – it is probably a good idea to continue with the same until your new pet is fully acclimated to the new surroundings and then you can start varying the diet. Do not feed your dog “people food”, becomes in time the dog will get used to it and will start begging at the table and being a nuisance.
2. Potty train your yorkie puppy. This requires a little bit of patience, but if done correctly your puppy will not get confused and quickly learn to go potty in the same place. Here is one of the methods to accomplish that. It requires the use of potty training pads.
- Remove all the carpets in the rooms where your puppy is allowed to be in. Place potty training pads in each room, corridors and balconies. Yorkie puppies are very small so your house or apartment will seem huge for them, so it is important to have the training pad in puppy’s view all the time. Puppies tend to make decisions quickly – they will look around and if they do not see a pad they will go potty right where they are.
- Every time you see your puppy using a pad, praise him with such words like “well done” etc, and you can even give him a treat from time to time (important – doe not give the puppy a treat every time as they will expect it as a matter of course). Also use the same praise word every time – if you use different words every day, it will make it much harder for the dogs to differentiate them.
- Every day scoot the training pad several inches closer to the permanent spot. Over time, when the puppy is sufficiently trained, you will be able to put the carpets back.
3. Next – a place to sleep. While your yorkie puppy is still small, it is better to have a special place for it to sleep. You can purchase a special crate from a pet store and when it is time for the puppy to go to bed, place it in the crate. Also during the day if you see that the puppy is falling asleep, place it in the crate as well. Also be firm! If the puppy starts to cry (or squeal), discretely check up on it to make sure that everything is OK, but try do it without the puppy noticing it – dogs pick up on things very quickly and if they realize what leads to what they will start crying and squealing every time they are bored. Now, if you need to “punish” a puppy for any “wrongdoing”, scold an shame it while they are still doing something wrong, because in a couple of minutes the puppy will not understand what all the scolding is all about. Do not hit your puppy with your hand – if your puppy is being a nuisance you can gently slap it with a rolled newspaper, for example.
4. Toys and games for your puppy. It is important that your yorkie puppy has some toys so it understands what is allowed to play with and what is not.
