When it comes to raising a pet, it’s like having a furry child. All of the same hardships and benefits of raising your own human offspring, or an adopted child is perhaps more accurate, apply here. After all, you’re caring for a living thing and trying to prepare it for its adult life. Therefore, your actions are important, and, in many cases, even when it seems like they might not be. Here are some tips to help you raise your pet to be the best they can be.
First and foremost, you need to get your dog acquainted with spending time alone. However, this isn’t as easy as you might think to engineer. For example, younger dogs follow their mothers closely and obsessively during their formative years, and so they are prone to panic when they can’t find their mothers. Once you’re the primary caregiver of said puppy, you’re their mother, regardless of gender. So, at first you may want to invest in Bowflex, for example, to avoid spending hours at the gym. Then, you’ll want to leave your dog alone for a few minutes at a time, then an hour, and so on until they’re comfortable being left alone. Remember, of course, that a kennel helps with this problem to a degree, but your dog shouldn’t be left in their kennel for more than a few hours at a time.
When it comes to house training a dog, keep in mind that your dog doesn’t want to be around their own waste any more than you do. When they go in the house, it’s because they don’t fully understand how houses work. You’ll want to keep them in a smaller area initially until they get used to it and be on the alert to take them outside when the need arises. Once they understand that they need to go outside, you can expand the dog’s area. Repeat this process until your whole home is internalized as their home, too.
