Most of what is written about this fortnight is either a shopping list or a set of rules. Neither is much use at three in the morning.
What follows is closer to what actually happens, in the order it happens, with the things that matter separated from the things that do not.
What has just happened from the puppy's side
Worth sitting with for a moment, because it reframes most of the first week.
The puppy has spent their entire life with their mother and littermates, in one place, with a constant set of smells, sounds and bodies to sleep against. Then in a single afternoon all of it is gone, replaced by strangers, a car journey, unfamiliar surfaces and silence at night.
Nothing about that is cruel. It is how dogs come to live with people, and eight weeks or so is generally considered an appropriate age. But it is a genuine upheaval, and the puppy's behaviour in the first days is a response to it.
The first days are not a training opportunity. They are a recovery period, and treating them as one is the single highest-value decision in the fortnight.
Which means the instinct to invite everyone round to meet the puppy, to start lessons immediately, to show them everything, is working against what the puppy needs.
Before the puppy arrives
The genuinely useful preparations, short list.
A confined area rather than the whole house. One room with easy-clean flooring, or a pen. This is not restriction for its own sake. A puppy with access to a whole house cannot be supervised, and unsupervised puppies practise things you would rather they did not: toileting indoors, chewing furniture, and swallowing objects.
Somewhere to sleep near you. Crate, pen or bed, in your bedroom or wherever you sleep for the first nights. More on this below.
Ask the breeder or rescue what food the puppy is on, and get some. Changing food in the same week as changing everything else is a reliable route to digestive upset. If you intend to change, do it gradually after a couple of weeks of stability.
Puppy-proof at puppy height. Cables, small objects, anything that can be swallowed, plants, cleaning products. Several common houseplants are toxic to dogs and it is worth checking yours.
Register with a vet before you need one, and book a check-up for the first week. Ask at that appointment about the vaccination schedule, parasite treatment, microchipping, and what the local disease picture means for taking the puppy out.
Agree the rules with everyone in the household first. Sofa or not. Which words mean what. Who feeds. Who gets up at night. Inconsistency between people is genuinely confusing for a puppy, and the argument is easier to have before the puppy arrives.
The shopping is mostly obvious and mostly not urgent. A collar or harness, lead, identification, bowls, food, bedding, a few safe chew items, enzymatic cleaner. The last of those matters more than it sounds, because ordinary cleaners leave scent traces that draw a puppy back to the same spot.
Day one
Keep it small.
Bring the puppy home at a time when someone can be present for the following days. Straight to the garden or toileting area on arrival, before going inside.
Then let the puppy explore the confined area at their own pace. Do not follow them around. Do not pick them up repeatedly. Sit down and let them come to you, which they will.
Offer water immediately, food at the usual time on the usual schedule. Many puppies eat little on the first day. That is common and not alarming on its own, though a puppy who refuses food for more than a day, or who is lethargic, or who has diarrhoea, should see a vet. Very young and small puppies can drop their blood sugar quickly, which is one reason not to wait long on this.
No visitors. Not on day one, and ideally not for several days. Everyone will want to come. The puppy has met enough new people this week.
Children need the rules set before the puppy arrives: the puppy is not picked up, the puppy is not followed, and when the puppy goes to their bed they are left alone completely. Children and puppies together need supervision, for the benefit of both.
The first nights
This is the part people dread, and reasonably.
The puppy has always slept in a pile of warm bodies. Alone in a dark kitchen is frightening, and a frightened puppy vocalises.
The approach that works for most people is to have the puppy sleep near you, in a crate or pen beside the bed. You can hear them, they can hear you, and you will notice when they need to go out. Once they are settled and sleeping through, over the following weeks, you can move the sleeping place gradually if you want to.
The alternative advice, to shut the puppy away and ignore the crying, does produce a puppy who stops crying. It also risks establishing that distress goes unanswered, at the exact age when the puppy is learning whether this new place is safe. The first approach is easier on everyone and there is no obvious cost to it.
Expect to get up. A young puppy cannot hold their bladder through the night. The rough guide often quoted is around one hour per month of age plus one, during the day, and while it is approximate it gives you the right order of magnitude. Set an alarm for the middle of the night for the first week or two rather than waiting to be woken.
The night toilet trip should be boring. Out, to the spot, quiet praise if they go, straight back to bed. No play, no chatting, minimal light. A puppy who finds night wakings interesting will continue them.
How this is taught inside Astra Trainer
The first weeks are the opening sequence of the Puppy school direction in the Dogs world, which runs seven courses across the first days at home, the socialisation window, house training, teething and biting, crate training, sleep, and early habits.
Lessons are about five minutes each, which is the design constraint that matters for this period specifically: you are exhausted, you have a puppy attached to your ankle, and you need the answer to one question now rather than a two-hour course later.
House training, mechanically
This is a scheduling and supervision problem. Almost all of the difficulty people have with it comes from treating it as a behaviour problem instead.
Take the puppy out constantly. After waking, after eating, after drinking, after play, and otherwise every thirty to sixty minutes for a young puppy. More often than feels reasonable.
Same spot, same route, boring. Go out with them rather than putting them out, because you need to know whether they went.
Reward immediately after they finish, outside, on the spot. Not when they come back in, which rewards coming back in.
Supervise indoors. Every accident indoors is practice at going indoors. If you cannot watch the puppy, the puppy is in the pen or crate or attached to you.
When an accident happens, which it will, clean it with an enzymatic cleaner and say nothing. Punishment after the fact teaches a puppy to avoid toileting in front of you, which produces a dog who goes behind the sofa and will not go on a lead. It is one of the most counterproductive common practices in dog rearing.
Learn the pre-toilet signals. Circling, sniffing intently, suddenly leaving the room, restlessness. Getting to the door before the puppy goes is the whole game.
Most puppies are largely reliable somewhere between four and six months, with regressions along the way. A puppy who was reliable and stops being reliable is worth a vet check, because urinary infections are common in young dogs and present exactly this way.
Biting, which is not aggression
New owners are frequently alarmed by this and occasionally conclude they have an aggressive dog. Almost always they do not.
Puppies explore with their mouths, and puppy play involves mouthing. It is developmentally normal, it peaks during teething, and it is not a sign of temperament.
What it is, is an opportunity. Puppies learn bite inhibition, meaning control of jaw pressure, through feedback from littermates and their mother. A puppy who bites too hard in play gets yelped at and play stops. That process continues with you.
What works. When teeth make contact too hard, the interaction stops. Stand up, disengage, wait a few seconds, resume. The information is that hard mouths end fun. Redirect to an appropriate chew item, and have those available everywhere since teething is uncomfortable and the puppy will chew something.
Watch for overtiredness. A very large share of frantic biting is an overtired puppy. Puppies need a great deal of sleep, often sixteen to twenty hours a day, and an overtired puppy behaves much like an overtired toddler. If biting escalates suddenly, the answer is usually a nap in the pen rather than more activity.
What does not work. Holding the mouth shut, tapping the nose, pinning the puppy, or anything that turns an interaction into a confrontation. These risk teaching a puppy that hands are threatening, which is a considerably worse problem than mouthing.
The distinction worth knowing. Normal puppy mouthing is loose, wriggly, accompanied by play signals, and the puppy is easily redirected. Behaviour that is stiff, still, accompanied by a low growl over a resource, or a snap that comes without play context, is different in kind. That is worth speaking to a qualified behaviourist about early, and early intervention for genuine behavioural concerns is far more effective than waiting. Never punish a growl: a growl is information, and a dog who learns that growling is punished may skip it next time.
What to teach in the first fortnight, and what to leave
The ambition to train immediately is understandable and mostly misdirected. Sit is not urgent. Almost nothing on the obedience list is urgent.
What is worth the fortnight:
Their name means good things happen. Say it, the puppy looks, something nice follows. That is all. This becomes the foundation of recall, which is the genuinely important one.
Being handled. Paws, ears, mouth, brief gentle restraint, brushing. Seconds at a time, paired with something good, stopped before the puppy objects. This is what produces a dog a vet can examine.
Settling. A puppy who can be calm in a bed while life continues around them. Reward calm when it happens rather than only responding to activity.
Being alone, briefly. Start now, while the puppy is calm, with absences of seconds building to minutes. The instinct during a week when someone is always home is to skip this, and it is why separation problems so often appear at the point the household returns to work.
Not guarding. Approach while the puppy eats and add something better to the bowl rather than taking anything away. Trade for items rather than pulling them out of the mouth. This is preventive work that is far easier now than remedial work later.
The crate as a good place. Fed there, good things appear there, door open initially, never used as punishment.
Why five minutes a day is the point
The reason the Dogs world is built in five-minute lessons is this exact period. What you need is the specific answer at the moment the question arises, not a course you intend to start when things calm down.
Astra Trainer keeps that running with daily quests, points and a streak, plus a streak shield for the day that falls apart entirely. Quizzes follow each topic and each course ends with a ten-question final exam. The daily Connections round and the 10x10 crossword are generated from this world's own lessons, and a Circle gives you a small group with a shared weekly goal, which during the first months of a puppy is worth more than it sounds.
Four directions in the Dogs world, thirty courses, and a guide inside for anything that looks strange. Seven worlds in one pass.
The crash around day ten
Worth naming because almost nobody expects it and almost everybody gets it.
The first week runs on adrenaline and novelty. Somewhere around day eight to fourteen, the sleep deprivation has accumulated, the novelty has worn off, the house smells of cleaner, and the puppy has started to feel confident enough to be difficult.
People describe this as regret, and then feel terrible about feeling it. It is common enough to be close to universal, and it does not predict anything about how you will feel about the dog in six months.
What helps, concretely:
Sleep is the variable. Split nights with someone if you can. Nap when the puppy naps.
The puppy needs less than you think. More sleep, less activity. A great deal of first-fortnight difficulty is an overtired puppy and an overtired person amplifying each other.
Lower the standard. Nothing has to be perfect in the first fortnight. House training will take months. Nobody is grading this.
Talk to someone who has done it. The reassurance that this is the normal shape of it is worth a great deal.
It improves. Sleeping through comes in weeks. House training becomes reliable in months. Adolescence, around six to eighteen months, is its own separate challenge, and that is a different article.
What to take from this
The first days are recovery, not training. Quiet, small, no visitors.
Sleep the puppy near you for the first weeks. It is easier for everyone and costs nothing.
House training is scheduling and supervision. Punishment after the fact makes it worse in a specific and lasting way.
Mouthing is normal. Stop the interaction, redirect, and check whether the puppy is overtired, which they usually are.
Build short absences now, while someone is always home, because that is precisely when it gets skipped.
And the second week is harder than the first for most people. That is the shape of it, not a sign you have made a mistake.
Should the puppy sleep in my bedroom?
For the first weeks it is the easiest approach for most households. The puppy has just lost their litter, you will hear when they need to go out, and you can move the sleeping place gradually later if you want to.
How often does a puppy need to go out?
More often than feels reasonable. After waking, eating, drinking and play, plus every thirty to sixty minutes for a young puppy. A common rough guide for bladder capacity is about one hour per month of age plus one, during the day.
My puppy bites constantly. Is that aggression?
Almost always no. Puppy mouthing is developmentally normal and peaks during teething. Stop the interaction when teeth press too hard, redirect to a chew item, and check whether the puppy is overtired, which is the cause of most frantic biting. Stiff, still behaviour over a resource is different and worth professional advice early.
Is it normal to regret getting a puppy?
Extremely common, usually around the second week, and it does not predict how you will feel later. Sleep is the main variable. The puppy almost certainly needs more rest and less activity than you are giving them.
Where can I learn this properly?
The Puppy school direction inside the Dogs world of Astra Trainer covers the first days, socialisation, house training, teething, crate training and sleep across seven courses of about five-minute lessons. You can see what is inside here.