Puppy go home

1. Protect your puppy

Trupanion is the only company we know of with no waiting period or lapse in coverage when your puppy leaves our home, so they’re covered right away. It’s a free month of coverage for our puppies (not free in FL and NY), with no credit card and no obligation to continue. We ask for it mainly because of parvo risk, which can lower a puppy’s defenses during the stress of moving homes. Keeping a policy active is not a requirement of the sale.

• Activate within 24 hours before or after pickup.
• Call 855-266-2156 (agents are available 24/7), or activate online at trupanion.com.
• Your promo code is in the go-home email we send once you reserve.

2. Review your invoice

Please plan to pay the remaining balance in cash when you pick up your puppy. Gooddog is available as an electronic option (including credit card or Klarna financing), but it adds fees, so if you need it, please send payment before pickup so we can focus on handing over your pup and answering last-minute questions.

If your puppy is flying or traveling to you by ground, the balance is due the day before they leave. If you’re using our 4 week training program, the program balance is due on Puppy Pick Up Day and your puppy balance is due 4 weeks later at final pickup.

3. Purchase your food

We feed TLC All Stages Dog Food. Order TLC Dog Food.

4. Purchase your multivitamin

We start our puppies on NuVet multivitamin to support a healthy immune system as they grow. We already give a 1 year health warranty, and when you use the multivitamin as the manufacturer suggests, we extend it to cover your puppy until they’re 3 years old. Order NuVet vitamins.

5. Sign up for training

Your puppy started on the Baxter & Bella puppy curriculum with us. Keep the momentum going with their lifetime training program, and get 25% off with the code DOODLES&DOXIES. Learn more at Baxter & Bella.

6. Support gut health

Bernie’s Perfect Poop is a daily probiotic to sprinkle on a morning meal. The stress of changing homes can cause loose or soft stools, and it helps keep them firm and the gut balanced to avoid allergic reactions like ear infections, paw chewing, hot spots and scratching. Use the code DoodsandDoxies to save 20%.

7. Your contract

We send your contract through BoldSign, so signing is easy, and a signed copy is emailed to you when you finish. You can read the full contract here.

8. Start your shopping list

Our favorite items and brands are linked on our shop page, so you can click straight through to anything you need before pickup.

Things to keep in mind with a new puppy

• A cough after vaccines. Puppies have just had their first vaccine, and sometimes one or two develop a cough. Our vet and we have tracked this extensively: it is not contagious and it is not kennel cough (all our adults are vaccinated). It’s usually a viral cough triggered by a briefly lowered immune system. Pups with it still have full energy and appetite, and most vets will tell you they just need to work through it.
• Giardia and loose stool. Giardia can pop up after a puppy goes home. We think it can be triggered by pregnancy in our moms, passed to the pups, then go dormant with our deworming protocols until stress triggers it again. The best defense is a healthy gut: use pumpkin puree plus probiotics for the first week or two, then stick to monthly deworming and a daily probiotic.

Optional add-ons for your go-home bag

These can be added to your puppy’s invoice. Just tell us if you don’t need them.

• Leash and harness combo: $20 (fits your pup right away)
• Snuggle Puppy: $50 (a stuffed animal with a heartbeat for crate training, with our home scent and the litter scent)
• Wooden slicker brush: $18
• Photography package: from $100 for 10 images up to $200 for all of the edited images we have, with no watermark and permission to share and print however you like. We watermark the weekly photos heavily because scammers scrape breeder photos and pass them off as their own — your keepsake copies come clean. A custom video of your puppy’s pictures and clips is $75.
• Puppy Preschool: a 4 week program where your puppy stays with us for one-on-one training. We accept only 2 puppies per litter.

After your puppy is home

Ask us anything, any time — and we would absolutely love updates and photos as your puppy grows. If the experience was a good one, a review genuinely helps us; it’s how most of our families found us in the first place.