Puppy care

[jsayson]

My wife and I really wanted to adopt a dog. Today I received an email from a friend that a litter of Lab Mix puppies where found by the road and they needed someone to adopt them ASAP. My question is, is it possible to care a puppy (giving milk and food) if we're away 8 hours working from Monday to Friday? I've read that I need to feed or give milk to a puppy four times day, is it enough to do it before I leave for work and leave the puppy for 8 hours alone in the crate?

Please help as I'm torn whether we should get the puppy. Time is running out because they will be forced to send them to the kill shelter if no one will adopt each of the puppies.

Thanks.

[hazelrunpack]

A lot depends on how old the puppies are. Would there be someone available (a neighbor, a friend, or one of you) to come over halfway through the day and let puppy out? That would be very helpful.

One rule of thumb that seems to work well is that if you take the puppy's age in months and add one to that number, it gives you the number of hours the pup should be able to hold its bladder (so a 2-month-old pup can hold it for maybe 3 hours, a 4-month-old pup for 5 hours...) So if the pups are 8-10 weeks, the pup would likely need to be let outside every 3 hours to avoid elimination in the kennel.

[jsayson]

Thanks for the very informative reply Hazel...

I doubt the puppy is old enough for my situation. I've got no one near us that can take care of the puppy while we're working. The puppies look too young in the picture. I hope they won't be sent in the kill shelter.

[Gail P]

While your situation isn't ideal, if it's a case of that or a kill shelter maybe you can find a way of making it work? In your sitution a crate as a sleeping area with an x-pen attached for a little more space and an elimination area if you can't be there to let the pup out often when it's younger may be the best choice. That may make the housetraining take more time but if you work at it the pup should get the idea as it gets older. You could also use just the crate for nighttime and if you're only going to be gone for a shorter time so that the pup gets the idea to hold it when in the crate, just don't expect a young pup to hold it for an 8 hour day, you will come home to a messed up crate. It probably wouldn't take too long for the pup to learn that for now the x-pen is the designated elimination area and the crate is for sleeping/quiet time.