Puppy Schedule 101: Creating a Daily Routine for Your New Pup

Bringing a new puppy home is exciting, but it also can be exhausting. If you're adding a puppy to your family, make sure you have all your puppy essentials ready, then it's important to be as organized as possible. Having a structured puppy routine helps you meet your puppy’s needs and reduce frustrating behaviors. A routine can even make potty training easier. An easy-to-follow daily schedule can also help you and your puppy bond with each other. Schedules for puppies are important because they allow our dogs to know what to expect from day-to-day life in our home. This helps puppies to feel more secure, be more relaxed, and better behaved.

The Four Components of a Good Puppy Schedule:

Potty Time

The fastest way to help our new puppy learn where we want them to go to the bathroom is to create a schedule. They must have given the opportunity to go outside and potty regularly. Puppies often need it during activity changes.

Always take your puppy outside to potty after eating, after playtime, and when they wake up from naps. These moments of transition are times when potty accidents can easily happen. Providing enough opportunities during the day for your puppy to relieve themself is important.

At minimum puppies need opportunities to go outside to potty every couple of hours. This will help to minimize accidents, and help puppies understand we want them to potty outside. When your puppy goes potty outside, offer lots of praise and treats. We recommend you to learn more about potty training your puppy. 

Mealtimes

It’s important to be feeding your puppy a high quality food. Puppies are growing quickly and need to eat more frequently than adult dogs. Most healthy adult dogs do well eating two meals per day. Puppies, however, need multiple small meals frequently during the day. Most puppies benefit from eating three meals per day.

Toy breed puppies can be especially prone to hypoglycemia when they don’t get enough food frequently enough and may need more meals spread throughout the day. Talk with your puppy’s veterinarian about how many meals per day is right for your puppy. In addition to three meals per day, puppies should always have fresh water available to them.

Playtime

Playtime is not only fun, but it also provides puppies with opportunities to learn, gain new skills, and bond with us. While running, wrestling, tugging, and mouthing, puppies learn about healthy boundaries, bite inhibition, and can explore the world around them.

Playing with people and playing with toys helps a puppy to gain confidence and explore the world around them. We want to include lots of playtime in our puppy’s day but keep play sessions short to avoid the puppy getting overly tired or overwhelmed. We also want to avoid any kind of play that is strenuous and involves repeated movements like running and jumping which can strain or injure your puppy’s developing joints.

Naptime

Sleep is extremely important for puppies. All the growing and developing our puppies are doing requires lots of rest. On average puppies sleep around 18-20 hours each day. This sleep is important to make sure your puppy properly develops both physically and mentally.

Having regular nap times into a puppy’s routine is also very helpful for dog owners who get a break when the puppy is sleeping. Time when your puppy is napping in a puppy-proof area or a crate is time that you can spend working, doing chores around the house, getting some self-care time without needing to supervise or entertain a puppy. This can help you feel more refreshed and ready to engage with puppies when they are awake.

Sample Daily Routine for Puppies

Puppy routines will look a bit different for each household depending on other schedule factors like work, and school, as well as the needs of individual puppies. However here is an example of a daily routine that can be used for puppies. Just be sure to modify as needed. For example, if you notice your puppy sniffing and circling, that’s a good indicator they might need another bathroom break even if it isn’t your scheduled potty time.

Wake Up

First thing in the morning take potty outside. Praise and reward your puppy for going potty. This is also a great time to play and interact with your puppy.

Breakfast

Feed your puppy their breakfast in a quiet area where they won’t be distracted. Give your puppy 10-15 minutes to eat their breakfast then pick up the bowl.

Potty Time

After eating, your puppy will need to go potty.

Quiet playtime

This can be a good time to practice a few simple tricks or cues like coming when called while playing.

Potty time

Give your puppy a chance to potty again before going down for some quiet time.

Naptime

This is a good time for a puppy to take a nap and get some much-needed rest in a puppy-proofed area or crate.

Potty break

Give the puppy an opportunity to potty.

Playtime

Time to play with your puppy.

Lunch

Feed your puppy their meal, either in a bowl, puzzle toy, or while training.

Potty break

Give the puppy a chance to potty.

Playtime

Training and play opportunity.

Potty break

Give your puppy a chance to potty.

Playtime

Opportunity to play with your puppy.

Dinner

It can help to feed your puppy dinner while you’re eating your meal, or while you are preparing dinner for your family. This can help cut down on some of the challenges of puppies being excited that you’re eating and wanting to beg for food.

Potty break

Be sure that your puppy has a chance to go potty again.

Playtime

Opportunity to bond and play with your puppy.

Potty break

Another potty break before bed.

Bedtime

Time for your puppy to go to sleep in a puppy-safe area or crate depending on your preferences.

Many puppies will not be able to hold it through the night, so to keep the puppy successful, it’s helpful to set an alarm or alarms through the night so you can get up and give your puppy a chance to relieve itself before returning the puppy to bed

Consistency: The Key to an Effective Puppy Routine

When creating a puppy routine, make sure that your schedule is going to be something you can be consistent with. Puppies thrive on routine and rely on us to keep their schedule consistent. The routine is only as good as our ability to consistently keep up with it.

Maintaining the routines we set as much as possible helps your new puppy to adjust to life together, pick up skills like potty training, and prevent behavioral issues like inappropriate chewing. By closely planning your puppy’s day you’ll be able to anticipate their needs, keep them out of trouble, and foster a close relationship with your dog as they grow.