Enjoy the Journey

The frantic energy of a new puppy sometimes arrives in a cardboard box wrapped in a ribbon, or tumbling out of a crate with needle-sharp teeth, a belly full of warmth, and boundless, chaotic curiosity.

In that exact moment, when the front door closes and you’re standing in the kitchen holding a wiggly ball of fur, the panic sets in.

I’ve watched it happen hundreds of times over the last twenty years of training dogs right here in West Michigan. The second a puppy crosses the threshold, owners feel this crushing, invisible weight of responsibility settle onto their shoulders. They convince themselves that every single second of the day is a high-stakes test. They need to potty train, crate train, teach sit, stay, come, leave it, and drop it, all while managing landshark biting, middle-of-the-night whining, and a level of sleep deprivation they haven't experienced since college.

It becomes this frantic, overwhelming jumble. People try to teach everything all at once, half-learning twenty different commands, half every rule, until the house feels less like a home and more like a high-stress boot camp run by a very small, very furry tyrant.

We treat raising a puppy like we’re cramming for a college entrance exam on zero sleep, expecting perfection right out of the gate.

Think about how human education works. We don't hand a kindergartener an advanced calculus textbook on day one and grade them on whether they can solve it. We start with socialization. We teach them how to share, how to exist in a room with others, how to handle big feelings, and how to feel safe in a loud world. We take it class by class, season by season, year by year.

Yet with puppies, we expect total mastery across every single discipline immediately.

We get frustrated when they chew a shoe, as if chewing isn't literally how a puppy maps the entire physical world. We get angry when they have an accident on the living room rug, as if their tiny bladders aren't the size of walnuts and completely incapable of holding a long stretch of time. We treat normal, developmental puppy behavior like personal insults or catastrophic failures of our parenting.

We worry so much about ruining them that we forget to let them just be.

In decades of working with families and their dogs, the biggest heartbreak I see isn't that puppies are stubborn or untrainable. It’s that people focus so intensely on the mechanics of doing everything right that they completely forget to enjoy the process.

They are so busy correcting, redirecting, tracking bathroom intervals down to the minute, and panicking over whether their puppy is "socialized enough" that they miss the actual magic unfolding right in front of them.

You blink, and that clumsy, oversized-paws puppy who fits in the crook of your arm is suddenly a full-grown adult dog.

Where did the puppyhood go? Did you spend it so stressed out about a missed command or a stubborn streak that you forgot to just sit on the floor and let them fall asleep in your lap, heavy and warm? Did you let anxiety rob you of the sweet, ridiculous joy of watching a puppy discover snow for the very first time, or bounce sideways away from a blowing leaf in the yard? Did you miss the charm of the clumsy hops and the puppy sighs because you were too busy staring at a training manual?

If you are raising a puppy right now, I want you to give yourself permission to take a deep, slow breath.

Drop the checklist. Stop worrying about whether your neighbor's puppy learned "stay" a week faster than yours did. It doesn't matter. Dog training is a marathon, not a sprint. You have years, whole years, ahead of you to refine their manners, polish their obedience, and build a reliable, steady partner.

Right now? Right now is for building a relationship.

Forgive the mistakes. Laugh off the chewed-up baseboard (and learn to put your favorite shoes away). Expect the accidents, because they are just part of the messy, beautiful road of learning how to live in a human house. When your puppy is driving you crazy and your patience is wearing thin, slow down. Sit down on the floor, let them crawl all over you, and remember that this fleeting, chaotic, exhausting phase is a gift.

Don't let the pressure of doing it right keep you from experiencing it fully. The commands will come in time. The obedience will anchor itself as they mature. But these early days, with all their mess and magic? They only happen once. Enjoy the journey.

-Erin