Labradoodle Puppy Checklist – The Ultimate Guide For 2023

Before Bringing Your Labradoodle Puppy Home

When your new Labradoodle puppy comes to your home for the very first time, it’s going to be a very intense moment for him/her, but most certainly also for you. The key to making this such a smooth and easy process as possible is proper preparation.

Know Your Local Veterinarian

This is something that’s often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be as it’s actually very important to know.

I have seen this many times. New dog owners are super excited when bringing their new puppy home and suddenly the little furball lets out a weird sound or cough and you go into instant panic mode.

It’s not until this moment you realize that you have no idea where or who your closest vet is located.

How To Find Out

When looking for recommendations, your best bet would be to just ask a local dog owner that you know. Family and friends will usually always give you the truth about any veterinary practice. But if you don’t know anybody in the immediate area that can give you such information, you’ll have to rely on good old Google.

Gather All the Information From Your Breeder That You Can

The most valuable person when getting a new puppy is the breeder. They’ve been taking care of the new litter for weeks and know a whole lot more about your new Labradoodle puppy than you, so make sure that you ask them as many questions as you can come up with.

Some tips to ask your breeder:

• Are the puppy and the parents in great health
• Ask for a diet sheet you can take home with you
• Breeders contact information for short-term support
• Feeding routines and times
• Has the puppy received any treatments (worming?)
• Health certificates for both the puppy and the parents
• How well does your puppy socialize with the litter
• Sleeping routines and times
• What kind of formula or food they are using
• Which vaccinations have they received and when are the next due

You will be a lot more prepared for bringing your new Labradoodle puppy home, the more information you can learn beforehand. It’s quite easy to remember things such as health and such, but you should also remember to ask about what their feeding times are, their sleeping patterns and any daily habits the breeder thinks are relevant.

Your new Labradoodle puppy will feel a lot more comfortable in a shorter amount of time if he/she has some familiar routines when they move to live in their new home

Labradoodle Puppy Checklist – The Basics

Let’s start with a basic, but essential, list of puppy supplies that I would thoroughly recommend. The items I’ve tried personally and can recommend has a link.

This will allow you to get a better idea of what other puppy owners have said about the product, so you don’t have to only take my word of recommendation.

What I’ll Recommend:

• Mental Stimulation – Read This
• Metal food and water bowls – Recommended Bowls
• Puppy food – Related article
• Brush – A slicker brush is a must – Best brush on Amazon
• Puppy treats – Related article
• Suitable crate (for the house + car travel) – Recommended Crate
• Leash – Recommended Leash
• Collar – Recommended Collar
• Harness – Recommended Harness
• ID tags for their collar – Recommended ID Tag
• Puppy toys, durable chew toys – Related article
• Poop scoop, bags, and a bin
• Nail clippers – Recommended Clippers
• Extra household cleaning products
• Puppy gate or baby gate – Recommended Gate
• Pet first aid kit – Read More
• Puppy bed – Recommended Bed
• Waterproof blanket and spare towels – Recommended option

You don’t necessarily have to get every single item on this list but it will allow you to be as ready as you can for your puppy’s arrival. You certainly don’t have to get exactly those I can recommend and that is absolutely fine, as there are many great products out there, those on the list are just items I’ve been able to try personally and have been satisfied with.

As long as the product does the intended job.

Preparing Your House – The Basics

Besides getting all of the necessary supplies a Labradoodle puppy will need, you will also have to ensure that your home itself is prepared for a puppy.

A Labradoodle puppy is constantly curious and will find a lot of things that you didn’t think they could, so it’s very important to take a look at your home from the eyes of your puppy. What can they reach? Where will they sniff around?

You have to address all manner of safety issues before your puppy arrives home.

1. Designated House-Training Area

House training, and many other kinds of training, should start as soon as your puppy moves in. There aren’t any good reasons to postpone the training, and it will usually only lead to bad habits.

Create a small area in the yard of your home where your puppy will be able to go do his/her business. I have a how-to guide on house training so I’m not going into too much detail here, but house training is certainly something you should have a plan for and start practicing from the very first day after your puppy has arrived.

2. Designated Sleeping Area

For the first couple of weeks, it has been proven more successful when you have your puppy sleep in a crate beside your bed than in some other room in your home. When a puppy leaves his/her mother and brothers/sisters it’s a very overwhelming and daunting experience that can usually make sleep time a challenge.

Your puppy will be able to feel asleep a lot easier if they know they are close to you.

So unless you enjoy having to move a single crate around your home every single day, it could be a good idea to have one for your bedroom and one for whatever other room you have planned to be their future sleeping spot. You could equip the crates with nothing more than just a waterproof mat and something to comfort them such as an old t-shirt or rag from the breeder.

3. Baby Gates

Puppy gates or baby gates, getting a few of these around your house before bringing your puppy home is a good idea. Not only are they important for training purposes, but for their own safety, they are absolutely vital.

A puppy shouldn’t have the option to free-roam your home when you just bring them home, and for any stairs and room entrances that don’t have an existing door, you should get some gates.

4. Electric Cables

This is something a lot of people overlook, but it can potentially be life-threatening if not taken care of.

You will have to make sure there aren’t any electric cables laying around that your puppy can end up chewing on. Nowadays most of us have all over the house, for our lamps, TVs, random appliances, and phone chargers in every single room, but these should all be kept far away from your furballs’ reach.

In the beginning, a puppy will chew on basically anything they can get a hold of as they don’t know what they can and can’t chew, so it’s your job to remove every possible health hazard.

5. Garbage Bins

I can’t count how many times I’ve forgotten this one myself.

You think you have everything tidy and neat, but somehow you’ve forgotten a small garbage bin somewhere and your puppy will in no time learn how to push over. I can speak from experience…

So consider moving any lightweight bins away from your puppy’s reach and only have heavy bins that won’t be possible for your puppy to shove over or climb inside.

6. Designated Daily Area

It can be challenging enough to look after a puppy, so having a sectioned-off room or area for them can help you significantly. Before you bring your puppy home, consider having a designated area for them set up and ready for use.

In this area, there should be their crate, water, food bowls, assorted toys, treats, and some cleaning products ready to use. This designated daily area doesn’t have to be where they’re supposed to sleep at night, I’ll go into it in a bit.

7. Final Check of the Home

As I mentioned above, your new Labradoodle puppy will probably surprise you with their never-ending curiosity. If there’s something you don’t pick up from the floor, your puppy will be over it in minutes and give it a thorough inspection, which means eat it if possible.

Just as with toddlers and babies, it’s why it’s so very important to remove all choking hazards they could get their paws on. Puppies are just furry toddlers and aren’t aware of what things are made for chewing or not, or if it might choke them, so that’s something you have to manage by yourself.

Having Several of the Right Kinds of Toys

With new puppies, a lot of the questions I hear typically have something to do with their mouths. Their teeth, chewing, biting,… the list goes on. So this is something that we have to take a look at.

Labradoodle puppies explore the wide world with their mouth, it’s their primary way of discovering, and communicating and is just an entirely massive part of their life.

And you should also remember that when bringing a new puppy home, it might not have received any worthwhile training at all. This is why you should start training immediately and it’s very recommended that you do so, you should still expect their biting and chewing habits to be quite bonker for the first couple of weeks.

This is why having a lot of the right kinds of toys will be very beneficial and helpful to both you and the puppy. 

The Best Toys for a Doodle puppy include:

• Hard, tough chew toys. These are usually toys made from hard rubber or plastic with small recesses and massagers.
  
• Dog bones. Known for their durability and ability to last for a long time. They often have a slight flavor to keep your puppy attracted to them and they are generally a great all-round option.
  
• Interactive toys. These toys are great for keeping your puppy entertained for hours on end, and that’s especially useful when you have to do some things on your own. There’s a wide range of different interactive puzzle toys available, with the best ones having the option of hiding treats in them. These toys will really get your Doodles’ brains working in healthy ways.
  
• Soft training toys. You should only use these toys for training. If you do that. the toy will function as a high-value reward for your puppy when it successfully performs a training exercise. Doing it like this makes the toy an efficient object for training and having a handful of these toys ready would be a great idea. Seeing as these toys are soft that means they can be torn apart, which is why you shouldn’t allow your dog to have them constantly.

• READ MORE: 12 LABRADOODLE TOYS YOU MUST TRY – AND WHAT TO AVOID

General Advice For a New Labradoodle Puppy

If you follow just some of the advice given above, you’ll be as prepared as possible before the arrival of your furry new friend. But allow me to also cover some general tips and tricks on how to care for your puppy and what you should do in specific situations.

Have a look at the tips below to hopefully help you understand how you should act in everyday situations that puppy owners can find themselves in. Knowing just a few of these can help you prepare better for a new life filled with puppy love.

1. Potty Mistakes

It doesn’t matter if you think you’ve done anything you can to prevent this, it will happen at some point, so you should be as prepared as possible.

And if an accident does happen, remember that you shouldn’t discipline or shout at your dog, as that will only make them distrust and be fearful of you, and that won’t exactly be beneficial for any further training. Instead, you simply show your puppy the error, and then bring him/her outside to your already designated area.

As this point is good that you start to have a set command to use for when it’s “potty time”, and you should begin using that command whenever you are at the designated potty spot. A Labradoodle puppy is very intelligent and can quickly build an association between the command and toilet time.

When your puppy manages to do its business in the designated area, even if you had to carry him all the way there, give him a lot of love and praise him massively. The key to a successful life with dogs is positive reinforcement training.

• READ MORE: House-Training a Labradoodle Puppy

2. Feeding Your Doodle Puppy

You normally won’t be able to receive your puppy before it’s 8 weeks old, as they have to be weaned off the milk from their mothers first. But their stomachs are still quite sensitive at that age, so you should get puppy food that’s specifically designed for exactly that situation, to avoid any stress on your dogs’ digestive system.

Many quality breeders actually offer that you can get some of the food that they’ve been feeding the puppies until it’s time for them to move in with you, and that will be a great help. Talk with the breeder about what their current meal times are, and then continue following that. This will make it a lot easier for the puppy to transition into this new life of theirs.

3. Can Your Puppy Go in the Yard?

When you bring your new Labradoodle puppy home you shouldn’t put it out in the yard immediately. It’s not until two weeks after they’ve had their second round of vaccinations. I can’t tell you at exactly what age you can take your dog out, as it depends entirely on when they’ve been vaccinated previously, so check with the breeder to find the precise time it was done.

A yard is like a zoo when it comes to foreign substances and bacteria, and each of these can be quite harmful to a young pup’s health, so check with the breeder and ask your vet if you have any questions at all.

4. Don’t Let Your Puppy Roam Free

It happens to all of us that we have to leave our puppies alone, even if just for a very short amount of time. In such a situation I would advise that you keep them in their designated area, or if you’ve crate-trained them just, in their crate.

If you need to leave your puppy temporarily, you should keep them locked in their designated area, or preferably inside their crate if they’re at least somewhat crate-trained. The point of having a designated area is that it’s easier to puppy-proof a single room in a way that ensures there’s nothing in there for a puppy to choke on or chew into pieces.

It’s a lot easier to clean up any potty mistakes in this area if it has some kind of hard floor. Your puppy’s safety should be your number one concern when you have to leave them alone.

• READ MORE: CRATE TRAINING A LABRADOODLE PUPPY

5. Use Comforters

When talking about comforters, I mean anything that your puppy can associate back to either your or their mother. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old sock or torn-up shirt, just something that has something they recognize as giving them a calm and comforting feeling.

This can be anything from a smell, shape, texture, or just how the item feels. When we got our puppy I gave him an old workout t-shirt of mine that wasn’t exactly freshly washed, and more than a year later, that shirt is still placed firmly beside my dog in his bed.

Give your doggy a comforter when it’s time to sleep, or when you have to leave them for even just a few minutes. If the dog can still smell you from the item, it will help them become a lot calmer even though you aren’t really there.

Something that works surprisingly well as a comforter is a “snuggle puppy.” These adorable little things are fluffy teddy bears that allow you to insert a heat pack into and this version also comes with a pulsing heartbeat. These sensations remind the puppy of having their mother with them.

When I first heard about these products, I brushed it off as a silly gimmick, but I got one from a friend of mine as a gift, as I was pleasantly surprised at just how great and cute, they actually are. And they are also highly recommended by other puppy owners.

Final Words

So that was our small Labradoodle puppy checklist, and if you follow just half the advice given, you are as prepared as you can be before welcoming your new Labradoodle puppy to your home.

You now have a comprehensive list of products, how you prepare your home best, and just what you can expect from your new puppy.

Taking in a puppy, training them, and just all about their general care and well-being is a very large subject.

And on my site, you can find several articles that go a lot more in-depth on all imaginable subjects, from potty training, exercise needs, grooming tips, and many more, so browse around and I’m sure you’ll find an answer for every possible question you could have.

Some of My Favorite Products For Dog Owners

I hope this article has helped you just a bit in everyday life as a dog owner. Being a dog owner for more than 25 years, I’ve tried many different products with varying success, but these products below are some that I can highly recommend to every dog and their owner without hesitation!

These links are affiliate links, so if you do end up using the links, I will earn a commission. But it’s products that I use daily myself, and I have the utmost praise for.

Dog Food: Every dog needs to eat correctly, and finding the best food for your dog can be challenging, as the market is absolutely flooded with products. But since 2015 when the company was founded, I’ve been using Ollie Petfood. With their product being tailor-made to suit every dog’s specific needs, and as my dogs love the product, I’m pretty sure I’ve found a product I will continue to use for many years more. If you use my link you can get 50% off your first order.

Dog Training: If you’ve ever owned a puppy, you know that it requires a lot of training to grow into a well-behaved adult. Brain Training for Dogs has helped me immensely with the mental training part of raising a dog, and it’s something I strongly recommend you consider.

Grooming: If you have a dog in your home, you’re going to need a brush, and for this, I recommend a Hertzko Self-Cleaning Slicker Brush. For that price, you simply can’t beat this brush for everyday grooming.

If you’re looking for the most up-to-date recommendations, check out my recommended products section that I’ve created to help every dog owner!