So, Matilda has been home with us for five days now, and I wanted to get it all down while it’s fresh — partly for my own records, and partly because I think it’s genuinely useful for anyone bringing home a puppy of their own to see what a considered first week actually looks like in practice, rather than just the highlights.
Day One and Two: Just Settling In
We’d already got her pen built and ready in the lounge before she arrived, so that wasn’t something to sort out once she was here, along with a LOT of pre-bought toys and goodies ready for her arrival.
Most good breeders will give enough food for the first few days after bringing your new puppy home, but it’s always worth asking what food they are on so that you can get some in advance.
For the first couple of days we didn’t take her anywhere at all. The priorities were simpler than that: make her feel safe by giving her company rather than leaving her to cope alone, get her sleep routine right, carry on with the excellent toilet training her breeder had already started, and help her through the nights.
Leaving your littermates for the first time is genuinely hard on a puppy. The old-fashioned idea of putting them in a crate on their own to cry it out can cause panic and extreme anxiety, and often cause a fear of the crate and future attachment issues. So I slept nearby, in the lounge with her, for those first nights, so that if she woke, I could gently soother her, and she’d hear me straight away rather than feeling alone. She settled into this far better than I expected: bed at 10pm, up once at 4am for a wee and a poo, then straight back down until 7am.
I kept the 4am toilet time very quiet, no excitement, no play or handling – just outside to the toilet, then back in again, and to sleep.
On day two, she met a couple of members of my family, and had her first walk into the field.
The field visit gave me an early insight into her personality: rather than wanting to explore, she made a clear decision to head straight back home. I haven’t seen this in a puppy before, and it’s a good reminder that no two puppies respond to a new environment in the same way. If anything, it told me something reassuring — she already felt secure enough in our home to treat it as her safe base, and confident enough to make that call herself rather than needing me to make it for her. Clever pup! It also reminded me to watch her at all times in case she decided to take herself home without me again!
It’s also a good example of a wider principle I come back to constantly in my work: always give a puppy the option to leave somewhere if they feel unsafe. A puppy who can choose to retreat from something that feels like too much, rather than being kept there, learns that their world is predictable and that they have some genuine say in what happens to them. That sense of autonomy — even in these tiny, early forms — is something worth protecting from day one, and it’s exactly what let Matilda make the choice that felt right for her.
Meeting the Other Animals — Slowly
We have three resident dogs, and introducing Matilda to them was something I wanted to get right. We let them meet her in the garden, one at a time rather than all at once. Gael, who is 11 years old and reliably very good with puppies, was the only one we introduced Matilda to, with no barrier between them. With Ozzie (3 year old entire male) and Flo (6 year old, not keen on other dogs), we used the pen fence so they could meet through it first, at their own pace.
This matters for two reasons. We don’t want to frighten Matilda by overwhelming her with three unfamiliar adult dogs at once — but just as importantly, we don’t want to put our older dogs in a position where they feel they have to snap at a puppy just to get some space. Ozzie in particular is an absolute gentleman about it — he lets her climb all over him, and when he’s finally had enough, he just does a few zoomies so she can’t catch him, rather than telling her off. But he’s also very attached to me, so the moment he comes back over, she’s straight back on him. We’re now managing this more actively — one of them in, one out — so neither of them is stuck with no break.
Meeting Willow the cat: If the cat involved is relatively unlikely to go straight to scratch mode, and the puppy is good at reading other animals’ body language, I find that letting puppy and cat find a balance while the pup is still young is the best plan.
Cats that don’t run, are interested but not likely to attack are ideal. Puppies investigate and soon learn they are boring. And the cats build confidence around the pup while they are still small.
Willow is a perfect cat for introducing puppies to. She’s had one spitting episode, which has made Matilda wary, and she doesn’t run when Matilda approaches her. Matilda is great at reading other animals and responding appropriately.
The Biting Phase
After a few days of settling in, Matilda started to use her teeth to explore the world and wanted to play, using her teeth, with everything, just as she had with her littermates before leaving home. Young collie puppies can be particularly bitey around feet when humans are walking, so we’ve started standing completely still the moment she latches on to a foot, rather than continuing to walk or reaching down to move her away — hands-on contact with a biting collie puppy tends to make the biting worse, not better. It does mean that walking to make a cup of tea can take five minutes instead of two, but we’re allowing time for that, and I constantly have treats on me so that I can give her treats as I walk if needed, before she has a chance to bite.
The types of treats used are important here – I’m talking very small treats that I can break into four or five even smaller bits. These are the ones that are working really well at the moment: Pet Munchies Natural Training Treats
Whenever I sense that she might latch on to my feet, I feed her one before it happens, so biting simply isn’t the thing occupying her mouth at that moment. Little and often, and always ahead of the behaviour rather than reacting to it.
One thing I noticed: on a night we fed her a bit of chicken alongside her usual puppy food, she was noticeably more bitey afterwards. If you’ve got a puppy going through a bitey stage, it’s worth keeping half an eye on whether certain foods (or softer poos) line up with worse evenings — try it again to see if the pattern repeats before assuming it’s a coincidence. If it happens again, you will know to avoid foods with that substance in.
Getting Her Used to Equipment — Without Rushing It
Matilda’s still too small to use a collar and lead, so we’ve started introducing a harness instead — and deliberately slowly. So many collies end up frightened of harnesses because owners just put them on: lifting feet, pulling fabric over the head, restricting movement — none of which collies are bred to tolerate or enjoy. We’re building it up gradually instead, so it becomes something she’s comfortable with rather than something that happens to her. We scatter tiny treats on the floor and gently put it on while she is occupied.
We’re doing the same with a dog pushchair we’ve inherited. She’s a chunky pup, heavy to carry around for socialisation the way I have with previous puppies, so the pushchair will let me take her out for socialisation for longer, using the pushchair to give me a rest from carrying her. It’s also nice to puppies to have somewhere that has already been conditioned at home as their safe space as a mobile base for visiting new places. She can observe unfamiliar, novel environments from the safety of her safe haven.
We will also use it for walks with the other dogs without needing to organise every walk around her nap schedule. Rather than just putting her in and pushing off, we started in the garden — treats thrown in, her going in and out under her own steam — and have only just moved on to closing it and moving it a short distance while dropping treats in. In a couple more days, she should be ready to actually go out and about in it.
Socialisation: Reading Her Signals
Matilda is a confident, feisty little pup at home, but she’s wary of novelty, and she’s still a little fearful of the car. Over the first three days, we didn’t pair car time with anything overwhelming— no shops, no busy places. She’s been out in the car for short trips every day since having her, and today (day 5 after picking her up), she slept in the car for the first time – a sure sign that she is starting to relax.
We initially held her on short journeys while travelling to support her in this very new, scary experience. Putting her on her own in a crate would potentially make her first few experiences of car travel more scary than they need to be. However, getting her used to a crate in the house or garden, then using this in the car, would be an alternative if I had been on my own.
It’s easy to hear “get them out to as many places as possible while they’re young” and take that too literally. It’s good advice, but it has to be balanced against what the puppy can actually cope with in the moment. The signs I’m watching for that tell me she’s feeling overwhelmed include:
- Turning away from things
- Pushing herself into me if I’m carrying her
- Gripping on with her claws
- Hiding her head against my arm
- Lip licking, yawning, and turning her head away
- Not wanting to engage when people come over
- Pulling away from anything
Any of these, and it’s a sign that whatever socialisation is happening is too much, too fast. Distance is usually the simplest fix — further away from the thing that’s worrying her, not less exposure altogether.
Sleep: The Unsung Priority
We’re aiming for a nap roughly every one to two hours, and letting her sleep for as long as she wants once she’s down — though with the current heat, she’s been going down faster (sometimes within the hour) and sleeping for longer stretches.
She has a large covered crate in a pen, which has a range of surfaces to sleep on, since collies often prefer something hard and cool over soft bedding — though we’ve got plenty of that too, plus a blanket from her breeder that smells of her mum and littermates (she hasn’t paid it much attention yet, but it’s there in the background). She has different chew items rotated in and out — coffee wood, olive wood, and a couple of safe flavored chews such as Benebone or Nylabone— though at this age she’s not really engaging with them much; she’s mostly just sleeping.
Getting this right matters more than it might seem. Puppies who are allowed to nap only where they happen to fall asleep — under everyone’s feet, with the household carrying on around them — don’t get the same quality of rest as a puppy who’s properly settled somewhere quiet. We leave a TV or radio on in the background during nap times too, so an accidental noise or someone walking through doesn’t startle her awake. Missed or broken sleep in puppies tends to show up later as hyper-arousal, extra biting, and that late-evening “witching hour” behaviour — very like an overtired toddler with no off switch.
Have a rule within the household right from the start – NEVER let your puppy out of the pen while they are vocalising. Always wait for a couple of seconds of silence first. If they don’t go silent, make a sound so that they stop to listen, then go to them. Remember that they can hear you moving in the house, so wait for silence before you start moving to go to them. By following this rule, we are teaching the pup that vocalising will not lead to letting them out of the pen, but waiting quietly will.
Toilet Training: Off to an Easy Start
This has genuinely been the easiest part so far, thanks in large part to her breeder, who kept a very clean setup with plenty of toileting areas — rough grass outside, and AstroTurf-topped trays indoors that drain properly. Matilda arrived already very used to toileting on grass.
We’re taking her out roughly every half hour for a gentle, slow lap of the lawn — slow partly because she keeps stopping to bite feet, and partly because I stay quiet and keep moving slowly, since standing still tends to invite her to just sit and look around instead. She also goes out first thing after waking, after any play session, and after eating. I’ve started to get a feel for when she will need a poo, so we stay out a little longer when I sense that’s coming.
I make a point of taking her out, to the area of the garden where she has toileted previously, when she is likely to need to go. Just leaving the door open and expecting them to go out of their own accord isn’t as successful – puppies naturally want to be with us, and are less likely to take themselves out every time they need to toilet.
Matilda has found night-time toileting a bit scary, which is very common in collie pups. Think about it from their point of view – there are a lot of differences between daylight and night:
- They can’t see as far as in daylight
- No birds are calling, so everything is very quiet, making unusual noises much more obvious
- Lights in the house cast long (“giant”), moving people- and dog-shaped shadows across the garden
- Torches make light that moves around on the ground
So on those trips out, I’m not expecting a quick wee. We sit on the grass for a bit and let her look around and settle before attempting the usual lap. It’s slowly improving each night.
Early Training: Small and Simple
We’ve started two very small pieces of training. The first is a marker word — I use “yip,” followed immediately by a treat, so she’s learning that sound predicts something good, exactly the same principle as a clicker, just without needing to carry one around. The second is the very beginnings of recall: saying her name in a warm, particular way, while she is next to me, then offering her a treat. I’ve also started training my emergency recall sound “Pup pup pup” when I give her, her dinner. I can then use this as a backup recall if needed. That’s genuinely all it is at this stage — nothing more elaborate yet.
What I’d Tell Anyone in Their First Week
If there’s one thing I’d want anyone to take from this, it’s pace. Everything we’ve done this week — settling her in, the dog introductions, the harness, the pushchair, the car — comes back to giving Matilda just enough new experience to build her confidence, without ever tipping her into overwhelm. It’s so tempting to rush the fun parts of having a puppy, but going slowly now is what gets you a dog who trusts the process, rather than one who’s learned to be wary of it.
Five days in, and she’s already shown us so much of who she is: feisty, food-motivated, independent, manageably bitey, very people-friendly, and occasionally wary of her own shadow after dark. I’ll keep this diary going as the weeks go on — there’s plenty more still to come.