- Hi, I'm Karen Kalunian, and today we're here at the Heart of Rhode Island, speaking to Jen Reynolds about tips for your new pup.

(upbeat music) So, Jen, first of all, everybody comes in, they adopt a puppy, they get excited, they bring it home, and then they go, "Okay, now what do I do?"

So, if you were just to give, like, the first thing you should do with your puppy when you get it home, maybe introduce it to the house.

What do you tell folks?

- So the first thing is getting them really comfortable with the house.

We actually want to have them acclimate just to the house and the yard for the first three days.

So coming from a shelter setting, it can be really stressful and any puppy really can be really stressful when first going home.

So, we wanna kind of get them used to the house, the yard, the people in the house, kind of getting 'em on a set schedule.

- Schedule is key.

- Yes.

- Especially when potty training.

- Yeah.

- Because that's really the one that everybody tries to get over.

That's the hump.

- Yeah.

- How do you get them to go outside instead of inside?

- Right.

So a schedule is really important in the first few days, establishing where they're gonna be sleeping, when they're gonna be eating, where they're gonna be going to the bathroom outside, making sure that everybody's bringing them to the same spot.

I recommend going outside on a leash for bathroom breaks, not just free roaming.

- [Karen] Getting them used to the leash.

- The leash, right.

So if your dog is nervous of the leash in the house, you can actually put the leash on in the house and let it dangle and drag behind them, giving them some treats, get them comfortable wearing it before trying to like drag them outside on the leash.

- Sometimes they get so afraid.

I've seen puppies myself, and you can attest to this, you put them on the leash and then all of a sudden they start to roll.

We call it the tootsie roll, and they're going.

- The alligator.

- Oh no, the alligator roll, the tootsie roll.

What are you doing to me?

And so they, because they've never had anything around their neck, obviously they, so the pressure and they might get afraid, so?

- So for a young puppy, the harness would be a really great idea at first because you can put the harness on, leave it on them, and then they're not getting the pressure on the neck.

And then you can put the leash right on the back of the harness, let it kind of drag.

Or you can do simple exercises, put the leash on, pair with positive reinforcements, treats, treats, treats, leash comes off.

Put the leash on.

- [Karen] That's a good tip.

- [Jen] Yeah.

- Because you know, sometimes, most puppies are food motivated, so you give 'em the treat and they're like, "Okay, if I put this on, I get a treat."

So they, they relate those two things together as a good thing.

So maybe we can put the leash on this little one.

- Yeah.

- And get 'em down on the floor and see how that goes.

Of course, Little Sun here has never been in this room and he's probably wondering what is happening at this point.

So this is just a simple slip lead, what Jen is using here, not something that you're gonna actually walk your dog on but for training purposes and for the purpose of this video, we're just trying to show you that we put the leash on, his tail is wagging and he's happy.

He's getting used to a little bit of weight around his neck area and he's thinking this is pretty fun right now.

- And we're pairing this with a high value treat for the first time.

- [Karen] High value treats, you might wanna just tell people what.

- [Jen] So what that is, is it's something really exciting for them.

So this right here, I'm using a freeze dried treat but you can use anything that kind of smells really stinky, that they enjoy.

- [Karen] Something good, something yummy.

- [Jen] Yes, something good.

- [Karen] And as always, we always tell you on "Animal Talk", it's all about good, yummy treats.

- [Jen] Yes.

- We wanna thank you for this great tip from Jen Reynolds from Training Tails.

I'm your host, Karen Kalunian and again, we'll be back.

To watch more videos like this, visit ripbs.org/animal talk.

(dog barks)