Bringing your puppy home.

The day you bring your puppy home is the start of something like fifteen years of companionship, mischief, and small-dog joy. What follows is what we'd want you to know in the weeks leading up to pickup and the weeks after, none of it exhaustive, since plenty of small questions tend to come up as you go, and we're always a text or email away. Think of it as a starting point.

Preparing your home

A miniature dachshund is low to the ground, curious about everything, and usually a touch smaller than you remember from photos. It can help to walk through your home at puppy height before they arrive: power cords, shoelaces, plants, small things they might be tempted to swallow. If it's reachable, assume they'll find it. Baby gates work well for rooms or stairs you'd rather keep them out of, especially since a determined dachshund puppy is more agile than you'd expect.

A few things that tend to be useful to have on hand by pickup day:

• A small exercise pen or gated area. This is where most of your puppy's day will happen early on: safe enough to leave them for short stretches, roomy enough for a bed, water, and a potty spot. Six 24-inch panels works well in most homes.
• A crate for sleeping and travel. Handy for night one and for car rides, even if it's not where they spend their days. Most puppies seem to feel safer in a crate that's just big enough to turn around and stretch out in, not a roomy shepherd-sized crate.
• Food and water bowls. Stainless or ceramic tend to last best, and shallow ones are easier for a small puppy to drink from without climbing in.
• Toys without small parts. It's worth steering clear of stuffing or pieces small enough to be chewed off and swallowed. Kong puppy chews, soft ropes, and appropriately-sized plush toys are good starting points.
• A potty area. It helps to decide this before pickup. If you're using pee pads, putting them in a consistent spot makes a big difference. If you're going outside, picking one specific patch of grass and using it every time for the first month is what makes house-training stick faster than most people expect.

The first 48 hours

It tends to help to keep things quieter than your instincts will tell you to. Friends and extended family will absolutely want to meet the puppy, but it's usually worth asking them to wait a few days. The first forty-eight hours, your puppy is mapping out the new home (new smells, new people, new floors), and overwhelm tends to show up as either nonstop whining or shutdown sleep.

We'd suggest introducing immediate family members one at a time. Sit on the floor and let the puppy come to you, and have the kids do the same. Most puppies prefer to choose when they're held and when they're exploring, so try to resist scooping them up over and over that first day.

Keeping them close to you at night, wherever they're sleeping, for the first week or two lets them hear and smell you, which seems to help more than anything else.

What to expect: accidents in the first week, lots of sleep (puppies sleep eighteen to twenty hours a day at this age), and an occasional refused meal as they settle in. None of that is a cause for concern. A puppy that's listless, vomiting repeatedly, or refusing water for more than a few hours is the exception; give your vet a call the same day.

Feeding schedule and transition

We feed Purina ONE Healthy Puppy, mainly because it's nutritionally complete, easy to find, and has been well tolerated by every litter we've raised. Plan on three to four meals a day in the early weeks, dropping to two meals around six months. For amounts, the chart on the back of the bag is the right reference. Feed the recommended daily total split across the meals, and adjust as your puppy grows.

Timed meals, not free-choice. Putting the bowl down at set times (and picking it up afterward) is one of the simplest things you can do to speed up house-training. What goes in on a schedule tends to come back out on a schedule, which makes potty breaks predictable and the whole first month much easier on everyone.

Fresh water should be available all day.

Daily amounts at growth milestones

These are Purina's own published guidelines for Purina ONE Healthy Puppy, not our arithmetic. The chart is keyed on what your puppy will weigh fully grown rather than what they weigh today, and our puppies mature between nine and eleven pounds, so the 3 to 12 lbs row is the one to read across. Amounts assume a standard 8 oz measuring cup, which holds roughly 96 g of Purina ONE.

The ranges are wide on purpose, because one row covers everything from a three pound adult to a twelve pound one. A puppy heading for eleven pounds sits toward the top of each range, one heading for nine pounds toward the bottom. If you are not sure where yours will land, ask us: we can usually tell you from the parents' adult weights.

Split the daily total across however many meals you are feeding that day (four at eight weeks, three around four months, two from six months on). Purina's own note is worth repeating: the amounts are a guideline, and avoiding overfeeding matters more than hitting a number. Body condition is the real guide.

From ten months Purina says to feed as an adult, which is the point to move onto an adult formula and its own chart.

How to know if it's working

Body condition score (BCS) is the standard veterinary tool, and it's simpler than it sounds. Three quick weekly checks:

• Ribs. You should be able to feel them easily through a thin layer of fat. If you have to press to find them, the puppy is heading toward overweight. If you can see them clearly from across the room, lean.
• Waist. Look down at your puppy from above. There should be a visible narrowing behind the ribs.
• Tuck. From the side, the belly should rise upward from the chest toward the rear legs, not hang level.

If any of the three is off, adjust the daily total by 1/4 cup in either direction and re-check in a week. Weigh weekly through six months, then every couple of weeks until adulthood. Wellness visits at 9–10 weeks, 12–14 weeks, 16 weeks, and six months are good chances to get your vet's read.

For a miniature dachshund, lean isn't optional. Excess weight is the single biggest modifiable risk factor for IVDD, the disc disease the breed is known for. Err toward slim rather than rounded.

Treats count toward the daily total too. The standard recommendation is to keep all treats and training rewards under 10% of daily calories, which adds up faster than you'd think during training.

Switching foods

If you'd like to switch foods, a 7-to-10-day transition tends to go most smoothly. Day 1–3: 75% old food, 25% new. Day 4–6: 50/50. Day 7–9: 25/75. Day 10: 100% new. A bit of loose stool or a few skipped meals during the transition is normal; persistent diarrhea or vomiting is a sign to slow the transition down or rethink the food choice with your vet.

Dachshund-specific guidance

This is the one section that tends to get less attention than it deserves: looking after their back. Miniature dachshunds are built long and low, and roughly one in four will have a disc episode at some point in life. Quite a lot of that risk is influenced by what we do day to day, so a few habits go a long way.

• Try to keep jumping off furniture to a minimum. Beds, couches, the car. Every jump down does a little wear on the spine. Ramps are a reasonable investment, and we're happy to recommend brands that actually fit a dachshund-shaped dog.
• Stairs are easier on them when carried, especially before about twelve months while the growth plates are still closing. It feels precious for the first week and then it's mostly just a habit.
• Keeping them lean really helps. An overweight dachshund is asking more of the same spine. As a rule of thumb, you should be able to feel the ribs without pressing for them.
• Flat, steady exercise tends to suit them best. Leashed walks, plenty of sniffing, gentle play. Jumping down off furniture and zoomy fetch are worth saving until the joints are done growing, usually after the first year.

None of this is about wrapping them in bubble wrap. Dachshunds are funny, athletic little dogs and they should get to be one. It's about which trade-offs are worth making early, so you have as many years of that as possible.

Continuing socialization

We start socialization on day one: gentle daily handling from birth, then different people, different surfaces, and different sounds as the puppies become able to take them in. Your job is to keep building on that gradually. The critical window stays open until about sixteen weeks, and the things they meet during that window tend to shape how they'll respond as adults.

A few rules of thumb: short, positive new experiences tend to work best, and ending on a good note matters more than packing a lot in. One new thing per outing is usually plenty at this age. Plenty of socialization can happen safely indoors with people and fully-vaccinated dogs you know; outside that, the parvo guidance below is the rule we'd want you to live by until your puppy is fully vaccinated.

Veterinary care timeline

Your puppy comes home with their first round of vaccines complete. Within the first week or so, it's worth taking them to your own vet for a wellness visit: getting them on file, hearing your vet's read, and booking the next round of shots.

A typical schedule from there:

• 9–10 weeks: wellness exam with your vet, second DHPP if not yet given
• 12–14 weeks: third DHPP, possibly bordetella depending on lifestyle, and many vets start the leptospirosis series here
• 16 weeks: rabies, final DHPP booster, second lepto dose if applicable
• 6 months: a conversation with your vet about spay/neuter timing. Current thinking for miniature dachshunds leans toward waiting until at least twelve months, and longer is reasonable. The concern is disc disease rather than growth plates, which close early in a dog this size: survey data on dachshunds links earlier neutering to more back trouble, with the clearer signal in females. Other work found no such effect, so your vet may weigh it differently, and that's a conversation for the two of you.

A note on leptospirosis: this one is worth a real conversation with your vet rather than defaulting either direction. AAHA reclassified lepto as a core vaccine in 2022, and reformulated lepto vaccines are safer than the older versions that earned the vaccine its reputation. That said, miniature dachshunds have roughly three times the vaccine-reaction rate of larger breeds, and the vaccine covers four of the 250+ known leptospira serovars, so the math is genuinely different than for a Labrador. New England is wildlife-rich (raccoons, deer, livestock) and lepto exposure through standing water and damp ground is real, but plenty of experienced dachshund-aware vets weigh the breed-specific reaction risk and the partial serovar coverage and don't recommend it routinely. Your vet knows your area; this is one to ask about directly rather than accept by default.

After the first year, an annual wellness visit and a dental check is plenty for most healthy dogs.

When to text us

Anything, truly. We'd rather answer "is this normal?" four times than have you sit on something that turns out to matter. The first month is the biggest adjustment (for them and for you), and there's no question too small.