Can I leave my young puppy alone for 3-5 hours while I'm at work?

Congratulations on our new puppy Twinkles! Twinkles is still a baby and she will not be able to hold it from 8-4. At her age, she can only hold it about 4 hours. If possible, have someone stay with her or some to check on her, let her out...etc during the day. It's important to try to establish good housebreaking routines early and stick to a schedule. You also want to be sure to have a secure location for Twinkles to stay when you are not home so that she does not get into trouble. Once puppies are 6 months old, most of them can hold their bladder for 8 hours. I hope this is helpful and please feel free to post any additional questions.

The best way to potty train a puppy is with a crate: https://www.petcoach.co/article/how-to-crate-train-your-puppy-or-older-dog/ At this age, Sophie should be able to hold her urine comfortable for 6 hours. If you must be gone longer than that, I recommend to try to have someone available to let her out to relieve herself. This will speed up house breaking. I hope this helps.

Yes you can, absolutely no problem just as long as it is not on a daily basis, at this age it is not recommended to leave her by herself for too long on a permanent basis due to potential future behavioral issues.

Most dog breeds will do just fine with this work schedule - most people do work 8 hour days, so this isn't uncommon at all :) A puggle would be a fine choice, as they are usually quite friendly and easy-going little dogs in my experience. The most difficult time will be when you first bring the puppy home, since most pups won't be able to "hold it" that long without a potty break or two. You may want to see if you could take some vacation time when you first bring your new puppy home to focus on bonding and potty training before you have to start leaving them alone. Another option would be to have a neighbor, relative, or dog-sitter stop by at least once during the day to take the puppy out. Most dogs can go 8 hours without a potty break by 6-8 months of age, so as long as you have a plan until then things should be just fine.

If he is over 7 days old, you could leave him for no more than a 6 hour period of time. He should be eating every 4 hours, but one stretch of 6 hours in a 24 hour period would be acceptable. Here is a great article with some guidelines for you: https://www.petcoach.co/article/orphaned-puppies-how-to-raise-them/ Good luck with him! Thanks for asking PetCoach!

If she is eating and drinking well on her own, then yes, she can survive being alone for that amount of time. If she is still nursing and not completely on to solid foods, then she would likely survive, but may not be getting enough nutrition, which can lead to problems if she has multiple days of being left alone for that long. If you are just leaving her alone for this long for one day, then she should be fine. If you are planning to leave her alone for 10 hours each day, then you should also worry about behavior problems developing. Puppies left alone for that time without human contact or other stimulation will develop behavior problems where they are less social and may be more aggressive and overactive. It's best to make sure that she has some contact with people and gets some exercise every four hours to ensure that she doesn't develop behavior problems later on. I hope that helps and all is well with Beetle.

I highly recommend crate training puppies regardless of where you adopted them from. The general rule for leaving dogs is how many months plus 1 in hours. So if he is 6 months old, you should be able to leave him for 7 hours. Congratulations on your new puppy and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.