By Sienna Walsh · Last updated 20 May 2026 · Health content reviewed by Priya Nair (RVN)
The first 16 weeks of a puppy’s life do more to shape the adult dog than everything you do afterwards combined. Get the socialisation window right and you have a confident, friendly, resilient dog. Miss it and you spend the next decade managing fear, reactivity, and anxiety that could have been prevented.
This pillar is a week-by-week plan for those first months, covering socialisation, toilet training, crate training, bite inhibition, and the foundation cues — plus a blunt section on what not to do. Pair with our best family dogs guide and dog diet pillar.
The socialisation window — the most important thing on this page
Puppies have a sensitive period for socialisation that runs from roughly 3 weeks to 16 weeks of age. During this window, novelty is processed as “normal”. After it closes — around 14-16 weeks — novelty starts being processed as “potential threat”. A puppy that never met a man with a beard before 16 weeks may bark at bearded men for life.
You usually bring a puppy home at 8 weeks, which leaves you 6-8 weeks of the most important developmental window. Don’t waste them. The goal is positive, controlled exposure to as much of the world as possible.
The socialisation checklist
- People: men, women, children, the elderly, people in hats, hi-vis, hoods, uniforms, sunglasses, people with walking sticks, people carrying bags.
- Other dogs: healthy, vaccinated, friendly adult dogs and other puppies. Puppy preschool is built for this.
- Surfaces: grass, gravel, tiles, timber, metal grates, wobbly surfaces, stairs.
- Sounds: traffic, vacuum, hairdryer, thunderstorm recordings, doorbell, fireworks recordings (played low), kitchen noises.
- Handling: paws touched, ears looked in, mouth opened, tail handled, being held still, nail-clipper shown — this makes vet visits and grooming easy for life.
- Places: the car, the vet (just to say hi and get a treat), cafes, the hardware store, suburban streets.
The vaccination dilemma: puppies aren’t fully vaccinated until ~16 weeks, exactly when the window closes. The modern veterinary consensus (and the AVA position) is clear — the behavioural risk of under-socialisation outweighs the disease risk if you’re sensible. Carry the puppy in public, use clean private yards of vaccinated dogs, attend a properly-run puppy preschool, and avoid dog parks and unknown-dog faeces until fully vaccinated. Don’t lock the puppy away until 16 weeks — that does more lifelong harm than good.
Toilet training
Puppies have tiny bladders and no warning system yet. Toilet training is about preventing accidents and rewarding successes, never punishing mistakes.
- Take the puppy out: first thing in the morning, after every nap, after every meal, after every play session, and every 1-2 hours in between. A useful rule: a puppy can hold its bladder roughly one hour per month of age, plus one.
- Go to the same spot, wait, and the instant they finish — calm praise and a treat. Reward where it happens, not back inside.
- Supervise indoors or use a crate/playpen. An unsupervised puppy will have an accident — that’s a management failure, not a puppy failure.
- Accidents: clean with an enzymatic cleaner (normal cleaner leaves a scent marker that says “toilet here”). Never rub the puppy’s nose in it, never punish — it just teaches the puppy to hide and toilet out of sight.
- Night waking: expect to get up once or twice for the first few weeks. It passes.
Crate training
A crate, used properly, is a den — a safe space the dog chooses to rest in, not a punishment box. It makes toilet training easier (dogs avoid soiling their sleeping area), keeps the puppy safe when unsupervised, and gives the dog a calm retreat for life.
- Make it positive from day one — feed meals in it, throw treats in, leave the door open so they wander in by choice.
- Size: big enough to stand, turn around, lie flat. Not so big the puppy can toilet in one end and sleep in the other.
- Build duration gradually — a few minutes, then longer, always returning before the puppy panics.
- Never use the crate for punishment. The moment it becomes a bad place, you’ve lost the tool.
- Don’t over-crate — it’s a management aid and a bed, not a place to leave a puppy for 8 hours.
Bite inhibition — teaching a soft mouth
Puppies explore with their mouths and they play-bite. This is normal and necessary — the puppy needs to learn how hard is too hard now, while the bites are harmless, because an adult dog that never learned bite inhibition is genuinely dangerous.
- When a bite hurts: give a sharp “ouch”, stop playing, and stand up / turn away for 10-20 seconds. The lesson: hard bite = fun ends.
- Redirect onto a chew toy whenever the puppy mouths you. They have a need to chew — give them the right object.
- Never smack the puppy or hold its mouth shut. It teaches fear of hands, which leads to fear-based biting later.
- Children get bitten most because they squeal and flap, which the puppy reads as play. Coach kids to “be a tree” — stand still, arms folded — when the puppy gets mouthy.
The foundation cues
Keep training sessions short (2-5 minutes), frequent, and fun. Use small, soft, high-value treats. Reward generously early, then fade the treats as the behaviour becomes reliable.
- Name recognition: say the name, puppy looks at you, treat. The foundation of everything.
- Sit: lure with a treat up and back over the head; the bottom drops. Mark and reward.
- Recall (come): the most important cue for safety. Always reward it, always make coming back the best thing that happens. Never call the puppy to you for something unpleasant.
- Settle / on your bed: reward calm. A puppy that learns to settle is a dog you can take anywhere.
- Loose-lead walking: reward the puppy for being beside you; stop moving when they pull. Start in the house, then the yard, then the street.
- Leave it: the cue that one day stops them eating something dangerous.
A rough week-by-week shape
- Weeks 8-9 (settling in): establish the crate, start toilet routine, name games, gentle handling, let the puppy explore home. Begin carried outings.
- Weeks 9-11 (socialisation push): puppy preschool, controlled meetings with vaccinated dogs, sounds and surfaces checklist, sit and recall games.
- Weeks 11-14 (building): widen the world — cafes, car trips, more people types, longer settle duration, loose-lead practice, continue bite-inhibition work.
- Weeks 14-16 (window closing): last big socialisation effort, polish the cues, start short alone-time practice to prevent separation anxiety.
- 16+ weeks: full vaccination usually complete — dog parks and open spaces open up. Adolescence is coming (and it’s a whole other challenge) — keep training consistent.
Preventing separation anxiety
A puppy that’s never been alone becomes a dog that can’t be alone. From early on, practise short, calm departures — leave the room, leave the house for five minutes, build up gradually. Keep arrivals and departures low-key and undramatic. A puppy that learns “being alone is normal and safe” early rarely develops separation anxiety.
What NOT to do
- Don’t use punishment-based methods. Alpha rolls, scruff shakes, choke/prong chains, shock collars — the modern behavioural science is unambiguous that these increase fear and aggression. The “dominance / pack leader” model has been discredited for two decades.
- Don’t skip puppy preschool to “wait for full vaccination”. The window closes at 16 weeks; you can’t get it back.
- Don’t rub the nose in accidents. It teaches the puppy to fear you, not to toilet outside.
- Don’t punish a puppy that comes back to you — even if it just ran off. Punishing the return teaches the dog not to come.
- Don’t flood the puppy — socialisation means positive exposure at the puppy’s pace. Forcing a frightened puppy into a scary situation makes the fear worse.
- Don’t expect adult behaviour from a baby. Puppies have minutes-long attention spans and tiny bladders. Patience is the whole game.
When to get professional help
Book a force-free, reward-based trainer or a veterinary behaviourist if you see: genuine fear that isn’t improving, growling or snapping in fear, resource guarding (stiffening over food or toys), or handling sensitivity that’s escalating. Early intervention is cheap and effective; a fear problem ignored for a year is a much harder fix. Look for trainers accredited with reward-based bodies and steer clear of anyone selling “dominance” or “balanced” methods that include aversives.
Where to next
Training and diet go hand in hand — you’ll get through a lot of treats, so read our dog diet and toxic foods master list to keep them safe and lean. If you’re still choosing a breed, our best family dogs framework helps, and our poodle breeds guide covers one of the most trainable breeds going.
Sources: AVA Puppy Socialisation position statement, RSPCA AU Puppy Training, American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) position statements on socialisation and punishment, Dr Ian Dunbar Before and After Getting Your Puppy.
Page last updated 22 May 2026. We re-check our pet-care content regularly and update when something changes.
