The Teaching Puppies Blog

The articles below cover every stage of a puppy's development — from the first day home through the moment they become a fully working partner — and every routine question a thoughtful raiser will eventually ask. They are written for people who want the real answer, not the simplest one. Some pieces are short and practical: how to set up a crate, when to introduce a new food, what to expect during a fear period. Others are longer reference guides that walk through training methodologies, behavioral science, and the small daily choices that compound across a working career.

We have organized them into five categories below. Most readers find their way through the blog in roughly this order: training fundamentals first (because puppy training is a skill that benefits from sequencing), then behaviour and house training (because the early-month issues are usually what brings people to look for guidance), then health and nutrition (because daily routine matters more than people realize), then grooming and care (the unglamorous skills that protect long-term welfare), and finally the puppyhood essentials that pull everything together. You do not have to read in this order, but if you are starting fresh, it is a defensible path.

Every guide we publish is reviewed by at least one professional trainer and one veterinary or veterinary-behavior specialist before it goes live. Where the evidence on a topic is unsettled, we say so explicitly rather than pretend a consensus exists. Where we have changed our minds based on new research, the older version of an article is archived but accessible, and the change is documented at the top of the current version. We treat your time and trust as the scarce resources they are.

The blog is part of a larger project to make professional working-dog knowledge accessible to anyone raising a puppy — whether you are working with one of our volunteer programs, raising a service dog through another organization, or simply trying to raise a family dog with the same care a working program would apply. We do not paywall content. We do not run advertising. The blog is supported by the same donor base that funds the rest of the organization.

Every article goes through four stages before publication. First, a draft is written by an author with direct field experience on the topic — a trainer, a veterinary nurse, a puppy raiser, or an outside specialist commissioned for the piece. Second, the draft is reviewed by a senior trainer for accuracy and methodological alignment with our broader curriculum. Third, the article is reviewed by a veterinarian or veterinary behaviorist for medical accuracy and safety considerations. Fourth, the piece is edited by our editorial team for clarity, structure, and readability before going live.

We update articles regularly. The publication date you see at the top of each piece reflects the most recent significant revision, not the original publish date. Where the underlying advice has not changed, we date the article to its last substantive review. Where it has changed — because new research emerged, or because field experience taught us something we had not understood before — we note the change explicitly at the top of the current version. Older versions remain archived for anyone who wants to trace the evolution of our thinking on a particular topic.

We welcome reader correspondence. If you find an error, encounter advice that does not match your experience, or believe a topic deserves a fuller treatment than we have given it, please write to us. We read every message, and we have updated articles in response to reader feedback many times. The blog improves because the people who use it tell us how.