Welcoming a Puppy — Notes From the First Month

We brought home Milo at nine weeks old and I will admit the first two weeks were harder than I expected. Not bad-hard, but the kind of tired that only new parents and puppy owners can commiserate about. He is a mix, small, curious, and — like every puppy — an early riser.

The single most useful piece of advice we got was to keep the first month deliberately boring. No new places, no crowded parks, no group meetups. A puppy is learning the rules of your specific home, and every new stimulus is more input than a small brain can handle at once.

A month in, he sleeps through most of the night, walks reasonably on a leash, and has claimed one specific corner of the couch as his own. The exhaustion of week one has faded, and what is left is genuinely one of the best decisions we have made this year.