Goldendoodle puppy guide

A clean home setup takes ninety percent of the chaos out of week one. Pick the corner where the crate will live. Make it the calmest spot in the house: low foot traffic, away from drafts, near the family but not in a hallway. Goldendoodle puppies are companion bred. They will want to be where the people are without being underfoot.

Build a small puppy starter shelf. Crate, food bowl and water bowl, slow feeder mat, freeze dried treats, slicker brush, paw balm, and a couple of soft chew toys are enough for week one. The full set of items Mango uses lives on the Favorites page.

Bring your puppy home in the morning if possible. The drive is the first big imprint, so keep music low, give a small piece of jerky halfway through the drive, and let them sleep if they want. Once home, walk them straight to the potty spot for two minutes before you go inside. This is the first lesson, before the first toy and before the first cuddle.

Crate train from night one. Set the crate in your bedroom for the first two weeks. They will whimper. That is normal. Resist the urge to bring them onto the bed because the muscle memory you build in the first ten nights becomes the rest of your life.

Three meals a day until four months, then drop to two. Do not free feed. Goldendoodles can be picky and free feeding makes the picky phase worse. Stick to the food the breeder used for the first two weeks, then transition slowly to your chosen kibble over seven days.

Treats should account for less than ten percent of daily calories. Single ingredient air dried treats are gentler on a puppy stomach than commercial training treats. Mango graduated from soft training treats to herring treats to chicken jerky on this exact path.

Puppies sleep eighteen to twenty hours a day. Build naps into your schedule. The five minute rule for exercise: five minutes of structured walking per month of age, twice a day. Two months means two ten minute walks. Six months means two thirty minute walks. Doodles are athletic and they will not show fatigue, so this rule protects their growth plates.

Brush your puppy every single day even when there is nothing to brush. You are not grooming the coat. You are training them to accept being handled. Run hands over paws, ears, belly, tail, and between toes daily. By the time their adult coat comes in around month seven, they will tolerate professional grooming without fighting it.

The full grooming cadence and tool list lives in the goldendoodle grooming guide.

Your puppy has a window between eight and sixteen weeks where the world imprints on them. Use it. Expose them to ten new sounds, ten new surfaces, and ten new people each week. Vacuum, dishwasher, car rides, hardwood, gravel, sand, kids on bikes, hats, beards, masks. A confident dog at one year old is a dog whose owner did the work in the first four months.

Schedule the first wellness visit within seventy two hours of bringing your puppy home. Vaccines run on a six, ten, fourteen week schedule, then yearly boosters. Heartworm and flea protection start at eight weeks. Spay or neuter timing is now generally recommended after one year for medium and large goldendoodles, so check with your vet rather than rushing the calendar.

If you only do five things in the first month: crate at night, walk before each meal, brush every day, log every potty success on a sticky note, and take a hundred photos. The photos are not for Instagram. They are for you in five years when the puppy is fifty pounds and the floppy ears are sturdy.

Need the gear list? Mango's daily picks live on Favorites. If you have more questions, the FAQ covers the rest.