An old chewtoy becomes immediately novel and exciting when stuffed with food. If you use kibble from your puppy’s normal daily ration, your puppy will not put on weight.

The wonderful thing about teaching a puppy to enjoy chewing chewtoys is that this activity excludes many alternative, extremely annoying puppy behaviors. A stuffed Kong is one of the best stress-relievers, especially for anxious, obsessive, and compulsive dogs.

By eight weeks of age: your puppy must have become thoroughly accustomed to a home physical environment, especially to all sorts of potentially scary noises; your puppy should already have been handled by many people, especially men and children; your puppy’s errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training should be under way; and your puppy should

Any punishment for inappropriate behavior is an advertisement that you have yet to effectively teach your dog how you would like him to act.

It is simply not fair to keep house rules a secret from your puppy, only to moan and groan when it predictably finds doggy ways to entertain himself and break rules he didn’t even know existed. If you have house rules, somebody needs to teach them to the puppy. And that somebody is you.

Raising and training a pup to be people-friendly is the second most important goal of pet dog husbandry. (Remember, teaching bite inhibition is always the most important goal.)

Basic handling exercises are the most important aspect of “test-driving” different dogs. Make sure each dog enjoys being gently restrained (snuggled, cuddled, and hugged) as you examine his ears, muzzle, and paws.

If your pup is ever left unsupervised indoors it will most certainly chew household articles and soil your house. Although these teeny accidents do little damage in themselves, they set the precedent for your puppy’s choice of toys and toilets for many months to come.

Specifically, owners need to know how to teach the youngster where to eliminate, what to chew, when to bark, where to dig, to sit when greeting people, to walk calmly on-leash, to settle down and shush when requested, to inhibit its otherwise quite normal biting behavior, and to thoroughly enjoy the company of other dogs and people — especially