Bringing Home a Puppy: The First Month in Nepal

What to have before the puppy arrives

Buy less than you think. A puppy grows out of almost everything in the first six months, and the things that matter are the ones you would rather not be shopping for at ten at night on the first day.

• The same food the breeder was using: Whatever the puppy is already eating, get a bag of it. Diet changes and a new home in the same week is the most common cause of a first-week stomach upset. Switch food later, over a week, once everything else has settled.
• A crate or a defined bed: Not a punishment — a den. A puppy with one predictable place to sleep settles faster than one with the run of the house, and crate training is far easier at nine weeks than at nine months.
• A flat collar, an ID tag and a light lead: The tag matters from day one, before any training does. Buy cheap: it will be outgrown within months.
• Two or three chew toys of different textures: A teething puppy will chew something. The only variable you control is whether it is a toy or a chair leg.
• Cleaning supplies, more than you expect: An enzymatic cleaner specifically — ordinary detergent leaves scent markers a dog can still smell, which is how one accident becomes a habitual spot.

The first three nights

The puppy has just lost its mother and every littermate it has ever known, in one afternoon. It will cry. This is not a training problem to be solved on night one.

The approach that works is to keep the crate somewhere you sleep for the first few nights, so the puppy is not alone, then move it gradually to where you actually want it. This costs you two or three broken nights and saves weeks of separation anxiety. The alternative — a closed door and letting it cry itself out — usually produces a dog that panics when left alone, and that is one of the genuinely hard things to undo.

Expect to be up at least once in the night for a toilet trip. A nine-week-old puppy physically cannot hold on until morning.

House training, briefly

Take the puppy out after every sleep, every meal, every play session, and roughly every hour in between. Reward outside immediately — within a second or two, not once you are back indoors, because a puppy connects the reward to whatever it was doing when the reward arrived.

Never punish an accident you find after the fact. The puppy cannot connect your reaction to something it did twenty minutes ago; all it learns is that you are unpredictable, which makes it hide where it goes rather than stop going.

In monsoon this gets harder, because a puppy that has never been out in rain will not want to be. Going out with it rather than sending it out is most of the answer.

The window that closes

There is a period in early puppyhood when new experiences are filed as normal, and after it closes, new things are filed as threats instead. What a puppy meets calmly during that window — traffic, bikes, umbrellas, stairs, men in hats, children, other dogs, the sound of a horn — it is likely to be comfortable with for life.

In Kathmandu that list is long and loud, and it is worth being deliberate about it. Carry the puppy through a busy street before it is fully vaccinated rather than skipping the exposure entirely; watching from your arms still counts.

This is the part people regret skipping. Equipment can be bought later. This window cannot be reopened.

Health, and what to ask rather than assume

Vaccination and deworming schedules depend on the puppy's age, what it has already had, and what is circulating locally, so this is a conversation with a vet rather than something to copy from a guide. Book the first appointment in the first week and take whatever paperwork came with the puppy.

Rabies is the one worth raising specifically, because it is present in Nepal and the timing matters. Ask your vet when the puppy should have it and what to do about street-dog encounters in the meantime.

Common questions