Puppy First Days Home: Meet Maple!

This is day 6 of the first days home after getting a new puppy! Meet Maple, a 7 week old, fox red, female Labrador Retriever. (pictured below)

Maple will turn 8 weeks old tomorrow.
She was born Friday, June 20th, 2025. Yes, she’s super young. Yes, it’s an adjustment. Yes, she needs to pee often and be let outside. Yes, she cries at times and wants to bite on things, and is curious about everything around her. But she slept through the night last night, and we have yet to need to let her out in the middle of the night.

Puppies like a baby?
I hear people say that having a puppy is like having a baby. I just totally disagree. I understand they cry, and pee and poop a lot, and require attention to make sure they don’t get into things, but it’s not like a newborn, at all. First, my husband like I mentioned in my last post Puppy Go Bag: Preparing for a puppy after losing our family dog is the primary person taking care of her. He’s home with her during the day, paying attention to the timing of feeding and taking her outside. I am the support person. Even if the roles in this were reversed, it’s not like a baby. I’ll leave it at that.

Puppy routine
So far we’ve learned a few things, like having her learn what our day is like is going to work better than changing everything for her. We go about our routine like normal and show her what that’s like. That’s working. Our breeder was feeding her at 5am. We are getting up at about 6am and feeding her between 6:15-6:30am. She also gets fed at lunch time around noon, and later gets her dinner around 5pm. Eventually, she’ll only be fed twice a day. We will not be giving her any “people food.” She has had a few training treats to taste, and will definitely get more of those soon.

Containing puppy
Maple uses a fenced in pen that collapses and moves between our kitchen area and the home office. She prefers the hard surface of the kitchen floor over carpet, and has an old towel to sleep on if she wants. She also uses a crate at night, not like the solid plastic ones I remember from years ago, but a metal cage-like design. I’m sure there’s a better term, but anyway… That crate is in our bedroom. The design of the crate is super handy, being adjustable in size. There is a way to divide it to make it smaller, which is how we have it now. When she gets bigger we can remove the divider.

The first night we put Maple in the crate she hadn’t gone poop before bedtime and ended up going in the crate. Darn it. We now make sure that her business is done before putting her in there. That first night we had a washable cushion inside the crate, but after removing it to wash it we noticed she preferred the hard surface.

Barking it out
Ear plugs don’t block out the high-pitched barking Maple played on repeat the first couple of nights. She has since stopped that. But during the day her bark seems to be for a couple of reasons. First, she barks if she needs to pee or poop. Cool, right? Helpful. Second, she barks if she wants attention. Sometimes we are more than happy to give it to her. Other times, we are busy and can’t. In those moments I’ve tried to simply talk to her and tell her to lay down. I have also tried to make a “shh shh shh” sound and she seems to respond to that and calm down. Did I read a book suggesting to do that? Nope. But it’s working currently. I used to do similar things like that with my boys, also not because of being told to. Instincts are helpful. Okay, maybe that part is like a baby.

Puppy separation anxiety
The main thing we are keeping an eye on is the barking that can happen when Maple doesn’t know where we are. We are noticing her barking at times when we leave the room, or at first when we put her in her crate at night. We don’t want her to have separation anxiety. I’m reminding myself she’s only 7 weeks old. She went from sleeping with her brothers and sisters to being completely on her own. It makes sense there will be a bit of a transition. To deal with this, we are allowing some crying for a while, but also are having my husband sleep close to the crate, placing it next to his side of the bed. She is completely quiet when he’s near her. This is working so we’ll do it until it doesn’t. (If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below)

Puppy things
Maple has a blanket that has her mom’s scent on it, as well as a sturdy duck toy she likes a lot. Both were given to us from the breeder. We’ve also given her a puppy-sized, pink Kong toy to play with as well as a long Nerf rope toy. We had to take away one dog toy that my son picked out because it was getting pieces broken off. She seems happy with the variety of options she has so far. After she eats, drinks, pees and poops she is content to settle down for a nap.

Curious puppy
Maple loves to pounce leaves, and needs them to be removed from her little mouth after she gets one. Yesterday I found a wood chip in her mouth. Out it came too. My husband said the sound of the air conditioner coming on outside made her jump. She also found the broom sweeping next to her pen in the kitchen unpredictable. (We’re trying to stay on top of keeping crumbs on the floor to a minimum.) Seeing the world through her eyes is fun to watch.

Funny puppy
Maple sits when she eats! Yup. She goes from standing to sitting next to her bowl (big sis Savy’s bowl’s). She also drags her ears in the water bowl, and yesterday stepped in her water bowl. She isn’t sure about her leash yet. She often tugs on it and bites the length of it like she’s going to walk herself. Her tail is sometimes a toy. She will notice it behind her and try to grab at it. Going in a circle is fun and entertaining to her, so it seems.

Sweet puppy
Maple loves to come up and lick our faces. She loves to be held and snuggled too. She likes to be close, which is the trait and main reason my husband and boys picked her over the other puppy we needed to pick between. That puppy they noticed was more independent and didn’t seem interested in humans. She seemed very interested in humans, so the choice was simple. Like I mentioned in my last post I was coming home from New York City the day they came back with her. (I’ll be sharing more about those travel adventures soon) It worked out great!

Transporting puppy
A collapsible crate (pictured below) helped transport Maple home. I suggested this type of purchase to my husband who thought she might just sleep on the floor of the truck. I wasn’t so sure she would stay put. He found this cool one. It’s simple to use, and worked out great.

Choosing a dog name
I promised in my last post that I’d explain how we chose our puppy’s name. It wasn’t easy because my kiddos had many of their own ideas. We had been making a list of options for a while. Some were great because you could easily have a shorter nickname option. For instance Savannah, our girl dog we lost in March, we called Savy. Maple doesn’t really have a nickname, yet. My youngest son thought we could add “brown sugar” on if we wanted. My oldest wasn’t so sure about her name we chose but is now calling her Maple no problem. My husband and I loved the name “Maple” because we have a maple tree in our front yard, and I love real maple syrup. Her fur color is reddish, like the tree leaves get in the fall. Most of the names we were thinking of had something to do with the color she’d be.

Dog tags
After we decided on the name “Maple” we had a dog tag made. It was great having it before they picked her up, and a puppy-sized collar with it too. Our cell phone numbers are on the back of the tag. She is also chipped, meaning if she is ever lost there would be a way to track us down. We have to look a bit more into how we go about registering our information to connect to that. There are a couple of options I believe. I love the flexible rubber the tag is made of. (pictured below)

Puppy vet checks and vaccinations
We have our first vet appointment scheduled next week. (The breeder had already done the necessary vet checks needed up until this point.) I’m looking forward to getting her fully updated with vaccinations and on track for whatever she needs. I’ll get her a dog license once I have proof of her rabies vaccination. My husband has also signed up for puppy training classes.

Maple is already part of our family and I think Savy would love her sister.

More puppy adventures are surely ahead!

Have you raised a puppy before? I’d love to hear about your favorite memory below.