Did you take time off work when you got your puppy, if so how much time?

[MrsTumbletap]

Hi all,

How did you plan around work when you got your puppy? Did you take time off? Work short days? How long for?

Just want to know what would be a good settling in period for a puppy and how to do it?

I work full time, some days at home and some in the office. As PP mentioned you can outsource the care. I use daycare for my dog. Worth every penny as I know he isn't being left alone for long periods of time.

Things to also consider with a puppy is that you can't walk them for long periods initially so trying to tire them out with a walk in the middle of the day with a dog walker won't be much use, hence why mine went to daycare.

The benefit I find with daycare is that I don't have to run around at the beginning or end of the day to walk him because he's already had enough exercise. When working full time don't under estimate how tiring it is to have to do that on top of work, looking after the house and all the other general things that you need to do with a young dog (grooming, training etc)

I'm picking up my pup around the first bank holiday weekend in May. I'm planning to take 3 days off work (it being 4 day week) and on the day I go in, the other half will be at home. After that DH and I will be working from home 2 days a week (as we usually do anyway), alternating so he's home when I'm at work and vice versa, and the remaining one day we will have a relative in. I will look out for a local dog sitter though in case there is a work emergency. Also whoever that is working from home the next day will need to be on puppy's toilet training duty at night too!

I'm getting DH to put up a whiteboard on the kitchen wall so I can write all the routine down... hopefully this will help!

Still part time over 5 year later.

I didn't take any time off, on the days I wasn't working from home she went to my partners grandparents who have a dog. She had a great time with them!

She now goes to daycare when I'm not working from home, which she also loves.

I took a week off when our puppy first came home, and definitely needed it as a new puppy is exhausting and needs a lot of attention with toilet training. It also took time to get her sleeping properly so that first week was a bit of a fog.
I work from home, so after that first week I was still around, I just had to be concentrating on work a lot more. I do sometimes travel with work, but my husband can do a day or two a week working from home to cover that. If we both have work meetings so we can’t be at home, we use a fantastic dog walker. Rather than one long walk in the middle of the day, we have the dog walker do half an hour mid morning and half an hour mid afternoon to break the day up more.

When do school holidays start? If the pup isn't born until early May, then eight weeks brings you to the end of June before ready to leave, and as mentioned upthread, some breeders prefer to keep for longer.

I've just taken the last 3 weeks off to settle our new puppy in and build her up to being left alone. I work away from home, usually a couple of weeks a month. We're in the fortunate position that my partners works close enough to home to be able to come home for lunch, and when I'm in the UK I dont have particularly long days.

Unfortunately (in this specific context, fantastic news in all others), my partner discovered she was pregnant about 4 days after we brought the puppy home, so we're going to have to look into dog walkers/day care for when the pregnancy progresses.

I dont half envy people who are able to work from home though!