Table of Contents
- New Puppy Parents
- House Breaking
- Consistency and Anticipation
- Crying in the Crate
- Puppy Biting
- The Journey Is Worth It
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Ready to Welcome Your Ohio Doodle
New Puppy Parents
This is your long-awaited day – the day you pick up your Maple Hill Doodles adorable ball of puppy fur! You’ve read our reviews from happy puppy parents, about how smart, cute, sociable and easy to train their new puppies are, and you’re thinking, okay, 2 weeks at the most and this will be our perfect puppy! But hold on just a minute! This day is just the beginning of your turn at puppy training. Now you have skin in the game, I believe the expression goes, and it’s up to you from here going forward.
Remember that your puppy is now officially a member of your family, with all that includes. You are responsible for all education as a puppy parent. Adopting a Maple Hill Doodles baby is an awesome responsibility, almost exactly the same as receiving a newborn human baby. Your child has a basic personality too, and has to be shown what you expect in small advances. That’s why we call those, baby steps.
Here, we’ll talk about the Big 3 challenges that must be met and worked through, to build a solid foundation for the rest of your life together with your puppy: House Breaking, Crying in the Crate, and Puppy Biting. Whether you’re in Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or anywhere in between, these challenges are universal for all new puppy parents. Don’t worry if you get stuck on a detail or even frustrated. Training for these 3 areas takes love, time, patience and consistency. The most important, of course, is love.
House Breaking
What is a housetrained dog? It feels like a black and white thing, the dog either is or isn’t housetrained. Yet, there’s more to the story. Housetraining is more of a spectrum than it is black and white. Let’s dive in and see what the normal process of housetraining looks like and how long it usually takes.
We do our best to give you a good head start in the process by using artificial turf (fake grass) as the bathroom area within our puppy pen. We also try to give our pups as much time in the fresh air as possible, so long as weather is permitting. The combination of the two helps to harness the puppies’ natural instinct to go in a designated area. For dogs, especially puppies, they’re all about following the crowd, so where other dogs go, is where they want to go. They figure out these areas based on scent, not visually.
Because this scent is ingrained in the turf and certain areas of the yard, the dogs tend to go in those areas. This is why, if you have that rug in your bathroom that your one dog peed on, no matter how many times you wash it, they’ll still carry the scent and the pup will be drawn to going there.
In this stage one of housebreaking the dog is learning there are places to go and places not to go.
When the puppy comes to your home, you now need to work to show the puppy where the designated place to go is. While you could use a pee pad or turf in your own home, we find these hard to transition away from, causing you problems later. It’s much easier to start with a routine with your puppy, anticipating when they’ll need to go and then providing them the opportunity to go outside where you would like them to. We recommend you choose a place in the yard and have the puppy in that area. You can leave some poop in that area to continue to signal that place as the bathroom area until they have it imprinted. During Ohio winters, when temperatures drop and snow covers the ground, it’s especially important to maintain this consistency—even if it means bundling up for frequent trips outside!
When the puppy comes to your home, Generally the puppy will need to go after certain events, such as eating and drinking water, and first thing when they get up after sleeping all night or a nap. For example, a puppy should always be allowed an opportunity to go within 10 minutes, up to an hour, after eating and drinking.
This combination does two things: it imprints the designated bathroom area, while simultaneously preventing accidents, which often lead to imprinting the wrong area as a bathroom area, like your rug.
After the routine is established and the dog has an idea of where to go and when, we can start expanding boundaries, such that the dog learns larger areas are not bathroom areas.
In the beginning the dog will naturally understand that a crate is not a place to go, unless absolutely necessary. We can use this understanding and start to expand the boundaries of the crate. You can then expand to a larger area, such as the laundry room or gating off the kitchen. It’s ideal if these rooms have easy-to-clean flooring like tile, so the accidents are easy to clean up. Keep an eye on the length of time your puppy can go in between bathroom breaks. As this expands, you can start to give them more free rein in the house. Quite simply, many people struggling with house training have given the puppy too much freedom, too soon.
While this is not an exhaustive troubleshooting list of housetraining, it is the general idea you use to start your puppy the right way.
Consistency and Anticipation
Crying in the Crate
No one expects a human baby to sleep through the night in the first year, yet many people don’t realize that puppies are still babies when you first get them. Sometimes, because we are buying puppies, and they’re considered old enough to be sent to a new family, we think they are further along in development than they are. They’re still babies and when they first come to your home, everything is new, it’s exciting, but also a little scary. Putting a puppy in a crate is a necessary part of housetraining, but it’s uncomfortable, because it’s unfamiliar. While the puppy is getting familiar with the process of the crate, they’re prone to vocalizing their frustration. The Humane Society notes that crate training, when done properly, takes advantage of a dog’s natural instinct to seek a den-like environment.
A major part of our breeding program is breeding a dog that is human-focused. they really want to be with you. As such, putting a puppy in a crate, in another room, can be extra scary for the pup. We’ve found many buyers have had success with crate training when the puppy is in their room,. Some owners have even gone so far as to sleep cuddled up on the floor next to their puppy, with their hand on their pup in the crate, to reassure the pup that they’re not alone, we’re right here.
It’s worth noting that some people skip a few steps and let that puppy charm their way into bed with their owner, those puppy eyes are no joke. Despite it seeming like an ideal situation, we’ve found that allowing the puppy into bed before they’re crate trained makes the process of crate training later very difficult. Even if you’re not a huge fan of crates, it is an important part of safety for your dog, as crates are best for transportation in an emergency, or even waiting for their turn at the groomer.
The crate is a key in the early puppy stages at your home and training. If you can do your best to make it a positive experience, a comfortable place to be, and have a little patience while the puppy learns the routine, I promise it’ll pay off for the life of your dog. Remember, the crate crying does come to an end in a few short weeks, often only a few nights, and is faster with the above tips. If you invest in crate training with your puppy now, you’ve invested in the future.
Puppy Biting
Those tiny razor-sharp puppy teeth are no joke! If you’ve been on the receiving end of those needle-like chompers, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Your hands, your ankles, your favorite pair of slippers — nothing seems safe from your adorable land shark, or as we affectionately call them, your “shark-a-doodle.” While it might feel like your puppy has it out for you personally, puppy biting is actually one of the most normal and necessary behaviors you’ll encounter. According to the American Kennel Club, mouthing and biting are completely normal behaviors for puppies who use their mouths to explore their environment. It’s not misbehavior — it’s a critical developmental phase that requires patience, consistency, and understanding.
Here’s what you need to know: puppy biting isn’t something we want to stop completely. I know that sounds counterintuitive when your arms are covered in scratches, but stay with me. Play biting serves a crucial purpose — it’s how puppies learn Acquired Bite Inhibition (ABI). Research from the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior shows that early socialization and bite inhibition training during the critical developmental period are essential for preventing behavior problems later in life. This is one of the most important developmental behaviors your puppy will go through, and we don’t want to waste this opportunity to create a safe adult dog.
Puppies explore the world with their mouths because they don’t have hands to pick things up and examine them. In the litter, puppies play-fight with their siblings constantly, nipping and wrestling. When one puppy bites too hard, the other yelps and stops playing momentarily. This is how puppies naturally learn bite inhibition. But now that your puppy is home with you, they’re missing those littermate teachers, which means it’s your job to provide that feedback.
Between 3 and 6 months of age, puppies also go through teething. Just like human babies, this process is uncomfortable. But here’s the thing: puppies aren’t biting during play to relieve teething discomfort. Play biting and teething serve completely different purposes. Chew toys are for quiet, calm chewing times to relieve teething discomfort. Play biting is about learning bite inhibition during interactive play. Don’t try redirecting to a chew toy during play biting or you’ll miss a crucial teachable moment.
The other factor is energy and overstimulation. An overtired or overstimulated puppy often loses their self-control. You’ve probably noticed that the biting gets worse when your puppy is wound up from playing, or right before they crash for a nap. This is completely normal, but it’s also a signal that your puppy needs help calming down.
So how do we address it? The key is teaching your puppy to control bite pressure, not stopping the biting altogether. Here’s the technique that actually works:
When your puppy bites during play, stay engaged — don’t pull away quickly because that triggers their chase drive. When they bite too hard, say “Ouch!” loud enough and sharp enough that your puppy bucks their head back. The second they pull back, immediately start praising: “Ouch! Good, good boy! Thank you!” Then allow them to re-engage. If they’re softer, tell them “good puppy.” If not, repeat the feedback.
This is critical to understand: the correct progression is reduced intensity (softer bites) before reduced frequency (fewer bites). Biting will get softer before you see them do it less. It takes weeks of consistent work to see real progress, but once you understand what you’re looking for, you’ll start noticing those subtle improvements. Each slightly gentler bite is a win worth celebrating.
When your puppy is too jazzed up to respond to the training, you leave — don’t put the puppy in timeout. YOU get up and leave. Come back in 30 to 60 seconds and try playing again. This mimics how puppies learn from each other. Using controlled spaces with gates during this phase makes it easier to remove yourself when play gets too intense.
Here’s where consistency becomes critical: everyone in your household needs to respond to biting the same way. Your commentary needs to be both consistent and varied — right and wrong feedback delivered constantly over weeks. If one person allows the puppy to mouth their hands while another person discourages it, you’re sending mixed signals that will only confuse your pup and make the behavior last longer.
What you don’t want to do is use outdated methods like tapping the nose, squirt bottles, crate timeouts, or muzzles. These don’t provide the right kind of feedback and can actually interfere with your puppy’s ability to learn bite inhibition. The ASPCA strongly recommends against physical punishment for puppy biting, as it can lead to fear and aggression. Never yell at, hit, or physically punish your puppy for biting. This doesn’t teach them what to do instead, and it can create fear and anxiety that leads to bigger behavioral problems down the road.
The timeline is important: by about 18 weeks, the window for learning acquired bite inhibition starts closing. By six months, it’s pretty much shut. Don’t wait! This is why the work you’re doing right now matters so much.
Here’s some encouraging news: even if your puppy is still in the biting stage after their baby teeth fall out (which happens around 3 to 6 months), it hurts so much less. Those adult teeth aren’t nearly as sharp as the baby needles. Many families tell us that once the puppy teeth are gone, the biting becomes much more manageable even if the behavior hasn’t completely stopped yet.
And here’s an important perspective shift: stop thinking of play biting as bad behavior. It’s not. Play biting is one of the most important developmental behaviors puppies go through. Yes, it’s inconvenient for us humans, but it’s natural and necessary for your puppy’s development into a safe adult dog.
If you’re finding the biting particularly challenging, or if it continues well beyond what seems normal, don’t hesitate to reach out to us or work with a qualified force-free trainer or veterinary behaviorist. Some puppies need a little extra help, and that’s perfectly okay. Remember, this phase is temporary, but the training you do now sets the foundation for your dog’s behavior for life. You’ve got this!
The Journey Is Worth It
Many people get a puppy excited for the dog as an adult — the finished product, so to speak. Adult dogs are wonderful because they know what to do, how to do it, and when they’re allowed to do it. It allows the owner to enjoy the dog without too much work. While all of this is possible, puppies, by definition, are not adult dogs right out of the box. The things we love about adult dogs take time, training, and let’s be honest, it’s a little — a lot of — work.
It’s common after the honeymoon phase that the process of puppy training can feel a little exhausting. Keeping a schedule and routine, as well as frequent bathroom breaks, can feel like a loss of freedom and give you an experience quite the opposite of what you hoped getting a dog would be. This is normal!!
Having a puppy is a lot like having a new baby. You’ll have to adjust your plans a little, come home a little early, and plan your Saturdays a little more structured. Thankfully with puppies, this phase passes pretty quickly, considerably quicker than with human babies.
Housetraining, crate training, and managing puppy biting are the biggest contributors to the puppy blues. When it comes to puppies, you get what you put in. You’ve got a great start by getting a Maple Hill Doodle, but we only breed potential. Now it’s your turn to turn that potential into an amazing dog. When you invest the time into these early phases of puppyhood, while your puppy goes through their fear periods and adjustments without littermates, you’ll be their rock, their person, the one they seek out in the crowd. You’ll build a bond that is unparalleled and will create the memories you’ve always wished for with your new pup.
Remember that the challenges of puppyhood are temporary, but the rewards of a well-adjusted adult dog will last for many years to come. Every puppy parent goes through these hurdles. And while some days might feel overwhelming, we promise the investment of your time and patience during these early months will pay dividends in the form of a loving, well-behaved companion.
At Maple Hill Doodles, we’re always here to support you through your puppy-raising journey. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need advice or reassurance along the way. Before long, you’ll look back on these challenging puppy days with fondness, as your furry family member grows into the dog you’ve always dreamed of having.
Frequently Asked Questions About Puppy Blues and Training Challenges
Q: Do most new puppy owners experience the puppy blues?
A: Yes! According to a 2023 survey by ManyPets of over 850 puppy owners, nearly 70% reported symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both after bringing home their new puppy. Of those experiencing anxiety, 45% felt symptoms “every day” or “most days,” and 70% rated their symptoms as more than mild. The puppy blues are incredibly common—you’re definitely not alone in feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or even regretful during those first few weeks. These feelings typically peak in the first month and gradually improve as you and your puppy adjust to your new routine together.
Q: How long do the puppy blues last?
A: The puppy blues typically last anywhere from a few days to several weeks, usually peaking during the first month home. Most families start feeling better once they establish a routine and see progress in training. Remember, this is a temporary phase that passes as both you and your puppy adjust to life together.
Q: Is it normal to regret getting a puppy?
A: Yes, it’s completely normal! Many new puppy parents experience feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, or even regret during the first few weeks. This doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision. The puppy stage is demanding, but these feelings typically fade as your puppy matures and you build your bond together.
Q: How long does it take to fully housebreak a Goldendoodle or Cavapoo?
A: Most puppies can be reliably housetrained between 9-12 months of age, though some may show significant progress earlier. Consistency is key. While you’ll see improvement around 4-6 months, being truly “fully” housetrained takes most puppies closer to a year. Smaller breeds like Cavapoos sometimes take a bit longer due to smaller bladders. Every puppy is different, but with patience and the right routine, you’ll get there.
Q: Why does my puppy cry in the crate at night but not during the day?
A: Nighttime is scarier for puppies because they’re alone in the dark without their littermates. During the day, there’s more activity and comfort. Try keeping the crate in your bedroom initially so your puppy can see and hear you. Many puppies settle better when they’re close to their people during those first few weeks.
Q: When will my Ohio Doodle puppy stop biting?
A: With consistent bite inhibition training, most puppies show significant improvement by 4-5 months. Once their adult teeth come in (around 6-7 months), the biting becomes much less painful and typically subsides further. The critical window for teaching bite inhibition is before 18 weeks, so start training early.
Q: Can I let my puppy sleep in bed with me instead of the crate?
A: While it’s tempting, we recommend crate training first. Allowing your puppy into bed before they’re crate trained makes the crate training process much more difficult later. Even if you plan to eventually let them sleep in your bed, establishing crate comfort first is important for safety, travel, and grooming situations.
Q: What’s the difference between puppy blues and depression?
A: Puppy blues affect the human owner—it’s the stress, exhaustion, and overwhelm of caring for a new puppy. It’s similar to what new parents experience with a human baby. Puppy blues are normal for new puppy parents and typically improve with time, routine, and support. If feelings persist or worsen, it’s important to reach out to a mental health professional.
Q: My mini Goldendoodle is 10 weeks old and still having frequent accidents. Is something wrong?
A: Not at all! At 10 weeks, frequent accidents are completely normal. Puppies this young have very limited bladder control. Focus on taking them out frequently (every 1-2 hours), especially after eating, drinking, playing, and waking up. Consistency and patience are your best tools right now.
Q: Should I use puppy pads or go straight to outdoor training?
A: We generally recommend going straight to outdoor training if possible. Puppy pads can be confusing because you’re essentially teaching the puppy it’s okay to go inside, then later expecting them to unlearn that. Outdoor training from the start creates clearer boundaries and is usually easier in the long run.
Q: Are Cavapoos easier to train than Goldendoodles?
A: Both breeds are highly intelligent and eager to please, making them excellent for training. Size differences mean Cavapoos have smaller bladders (so more frequent potty breaks early on), but both breeds respond well to positive reinforcement training. Your consistency matters more than the breed when it comes to training success.
Q: What if my puppy isn’t responding to the bite inhibition training?
A: Make sure everyone in your household is using the exact same technique consistently. It takes weeks of constant feedback, not just a few sessions. If your puppy is over 18 weeks and you’re still struggling, the window for bite inhibition is closing. Contact a qualified force-free trainer or veterinary behaviorist for personalized help.
Q: Will my Doodle puppy’s personality change as they grow?
A: Yes! Puppies go through several developmental stages as they mature. The crazy, bitey, high-energy puppy phase mellows considerably as they approach adulthood (around 1-2 years). Your Doodle’s core personality traits will remain, but the intensity of puppy behaviors like biting, jumping, and hyperactivity will decrease with age, training, and maturity. The sweet, calm companion you’re dreaming of is in there—they just need time to grow into it.
Ready to Welcome Your Ohio Doodle?
At Maple Hill Doodles, we raise our puppies right here in Ohio as part of our family. We provide ongoing support to help you through every challenge of puppyhood, including the puppy blues.
Whether you’re interested in Goldendoodles, Cavapoos, or Cavadoodles, we’re here to support you through housebreaking, crate training, puppy biting, and beyond!
