New puppy · First week
Broken sleep, puddles on the floor, needle teeth on your sleeve — and a quiet voice asking whether you're doing this right. You are. It's just a lot, all at once.
Week one
A few days ago they left everything they knew — littermates, familiar smells, the shape of the day — and landed in a house with rules nobody has explained yet. Most of what looks like misbehaviour this week is a small animal running the numbers on an unfamiliar world.
Sleep is broken because they are eight weeks old, not because something has gone wrong. House-training isn't installed yet because the bladder isn't finished growing. This week is orientation, for both of you.
What you might notice
Mouthing peaks while they're teething — it's how puppies investigate everything, your sleeve included. Accidents arrive in clusters, usually right after sleep, food or excitement. And the crying at night is nearly always about distance rather than the crate itself.
None of it means you got a difficult puppy. It's the standard first-week set, and every single item on it is temporary.
What helps
Closeness at night shortens the noisy stretch more than anything else — a crate or bed within arm's reach of you. Frequent trips outside, and no scolding after the fact, is most of house-training. A calm, slightly boring response to teeth works faster than a dramatic one.
That's the shape of Amble too. Each morning it writes one short card about your puppy: one thing worth noticing today, and one small thing to try. Read it with your coffee, then get on with your day.
What you can let go of
There is no version of the first week where you learn everything. Puppies don't arrive with a syllabus, and the internet will hand you nine conflicting ones before breakfast. Trying to follow all of them is what actually makes week one hard.
So let the rest keep. It will still be there tomorrow — and tomorrow there is a new card.
A real example
Not advice in general — one thing to notice about your puppy today, and one thing to try.
An example for a young puppy.
When a puppy who is roughly four months old gets teeth on your hands, she is just finding out how things hold together.
Keep a spare rubber toy or a frozen washcloth in your pocket to offer the moment those teeth appear.
And it grows with them
The fear period around four months. Adolescence, when recall suddenly becomes optional. The slow settling into an adult, and the quieter years after that. Amble shifts as your dog does — the cards you get at eight months will not be the ones you get this week.
Takes about a minute. Free to start.
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