The first night home with a new puppy

The drive home was perfect. The puppy slept in my daughter's lap the whole way, and we had already picked a name. Then the sun went down.

At 1am the whining started. By 2am it was crying, and at 3am my wife said the thing every new puppy owner says: are we sure about this?

Why the first night is so hard

Your puppy has never slept alone. For eight weeks, home has been a warm pile of siblings and a mother that smelled like breakfast. Your living room, however nice, is a strange cave with no pile in it.

The crying is not misbehavior. It is a very small animal calling for its family, and you are now the family.

Three things that helped on night two

First, we moved the crate next to our bed. Close enough that a finger hanging down counted as company.

Second, a ticking clock wrapped in a towel under the blanket. It sounds silly until you remember the heartbeat argument: it worked within an hour.

Third, a toy from the breeder that smelled like the litter. Scent does more work than any gadget.

Night three was quiet. Night four, he slept through. Within two weeks the crate was his den and he walked in on his own when he was tired.

I think about that first night a lot, because at Poteho we design bedding for exactly this moment. A bed a puppy can dig into, with walls that touch its back, does more for sleep than any expensive thing we could add. The puppy does not need luxury. It needs something that feels like the pile it left behind.