This section is designed to help puppy owners provide the care their puppy needs. The information follows your puppy's growth and development in stages from the first six weeks of life all the way through the second year. In each chapter, age-appropriate information is provided on training, Veterinary care and nutrition.

 Understanding the basics of puppy behavior is the first step in providing better care for your puppy. Even as we share great emotional bonds with our pets, we must respect their natural instincts. And puppies are instinctively pack animals.

 When you bring a puppy into your home, your family becomes his pack, and you must become the leader. It is a step-by-step process and while it begins the first day you bring your puppy home, it's never too late to begin again. So even if you've missed the first steps in the training process, you need not be disheartened. You can simply go back and pick up the information from previous files as you begin again to chart the course for your special puppy.

 Unless you're a breeder or pet professional, you've probably had very little exposure to puppies during their first six weeks of life. For the first two weeks, a newborn puppy is functionally blind and deaf his whole little being focused on seeking nourishment and warmth from his mother. At about three weeks of age, little puppies begin to become social wagging their tails, playing with litter mates, noticing people. It is during this socialization period, which extends into the twelfth or fourteenth week, that a puppy acquires almost all of his adult sensory, motor, and learning abilities. And while puppies are typically not ready to be separated from their mother and litter mates until the seventh week, they need a human touch during this impressionable time if they are ever to truly bond with people.