Potty Training Aids: What Your New Puppy Needs

After arriving to his new home, your new puppy will need high-quality puppy food. He needs a feeding dish and a separate water bowl, both made preferably of unbreakable material. He will also need a collar that fits him right now, not one to be grown into, and a leash from the moment you bring him home. Both should be an appropriate weight and type for his size. You can go to any pet supply shop or online catalogs and find an interesting assortment of these and other accessories from which you can choose from. Next, you will need grooming tools that are suitable for your puppy’s type of coat.

You should have a few toys available as soon as your puppy arrives. Toys will help make him feel comfortable in his new surroundings and will keep him busy for hours. One of the best toys is a beef bone, either rib, leg, or knuckle (the latter type you can purchase to make soup), cut to an appropriate size for your puppy. These are absolutely safe and provide a great exercise for the teething period, helping to get the baby teeth quickly out of the way with no problems. Equally satisfactory is a nylon bone that does not chip or splinter and that "frizzles" as the puppy chews, providing healthful gum massage. Rawhide chews are also safe, provided they are made in the United States. There was a problem a few years back, owing to the chemicals with which some foreign rawhide toys had been treated.

Avoid plastics and any sort of rubber toys, particularly those with squeakers to which the puppy can easily remove and swallow. If you want a ball for the puppy to use when playing with him, select one of very hard construction made for this purpose and do not leave it alone with him because he may chew it off and swallow bits of the rubber. Take the ball with you when the game is over. This also applies to some of those "tug of war" type rubber toys which are fun when used with the two of you for that purpose but again should not be left behind for the dog to work on with his teeth. Pieces of swallowed rubber, squeakers, and other such foreign articles can wreak great havoc in the intestinal tract, so do all you can to guard against them.