We recommend getting your puppy used to sitting on a table and having their teeth, ears, paws and tail examined on a regular basis at home, by you and maybe some friends or family members, using lots of treats and rewards.

Hopefully this will mean they are more at ease when the vet needs to have a look at them on the consult table, making the whole experience less stressful.

Getting your puppy used to having their teeth and mouth examined also helps later on with teeth cleaning. We recommend starting this as soon as your puppy has all its adult teeth, as it is by far the best way to maintain good oral health and prevent a costly and traumatic dental procedure later in life. Talk to our nurse or see our section on oral health for help with teeth cleaning once your puppy is old enough.

The vaccine we give your puppy protects against several life threatening diseases including distemper, leptospirosis, parvovirus, parainfluenza and infectious canine hepatitis (also called adenovirus).

To prevent these distressing illnesses, our recommendation is to give the first vaccine at 8-9 weeks old and the second 21-28 days later at 12 weeks old. This time frame ensures your puppy achieves maximum immunity. In some breeds (for example Dobermans and Rottweilers) the vet may recommend a third vaccine at 16 weeks. You should discuss this with your veterinary surgeon.

If your puppy was vaccinated by the breeder’s veterinary practice, we will need to see the vaccination certificate so we can make sure we give the correct vaccine at the correct time.

Puppies should not be allowed contact with unknown (and potentially unvaccinated dogs) until 1 week after their 2nd vaccine. However, it is really important to socialise them from a young age, so you should allow them to play in the house or garden with friends’ dogs who you know are fully vaccinated and friendly.

Vaccines should be boosted every year; as well as maintaining immunity, this is the perfect opportunity for the vet to fully examine your dog and pick up any problems early on. We will do our best to send you a reminder each year, but it remains the owner’s responsibility to ensure booster vaccinations are kept up to date.

We recommend a good quality, complete, dry puppy food from brands such as Arden Grange, Burns, Eden and James Wellbeloved (this is by no means an exhaustive list – there are lots of good brands of dog food.

The main things to look for are natural ingredients, no additives or colourants, and a high protein content). You can add puppy wet food to the dry food if they are really fussy but if you can get them eating just dry food it is far better for their teeth. It’s also cheaper, more hygienic and more convenient to be on a complete dry food! Once you have found a brand your puppy is happy with and their stools are a normal consistency, stick with that brand and be careful when changing flavours to introduce them gradually because a sudden change may upset their tummies.

New puppies should be kept on the same food the breeder or rescue centre has been feeding them for at least a week after you take them on. It is too much of a disruption to take them away from their litter mates, mum and familiar surroundings, and change their diet all in one go. The exception to this is if the breeder was giving the puppy unusual mixtures of goat’s cheese/yogurt/Weetabix etc. You can wean your puppy off this over a period of a few days as the puppy is not benefiting from this kind of diet and it is an unnecessary hassle for you as a new owner.

We do not recommend a raw diet for any animal, especially puppies, for various medical reasons including the risk of foreign bodies and food-borne diseases such as Salmonella and Campylobacter. If you are considering a raw diet, please talk to a vet or vet nurse first. At the very least, we can give you pointers on how to make sure your dog gets the right balance of nutrients for growth, bone health etc.

How much to feed depends on the breed of your dog and its age, as well as the brand of food you choose. Follow the guidelines on the back of the food packet and talk to a vet if you think your puppy is not growing as it should, or is getting too podgy! Puppies should be fed 4 times daily until they are 12-16 weeks old, then 3 times daily until they are about 6 months old. We recommend twice daily feeding throughout adulthood, as once daily feeding is a lot for their digestion to cope with and also predisposes to obesity. At what age to swap your puppy onto an adult food depends on a number of factors including breed, weight gain, age of neutering, activity level etc. Talk to a nurse if you are unsure when to swap from a puppy to an adult food.

Remember dogs do not have to be fed from their bowl all the time. You can use their food as a reward when you are doing training sessions, out on walks to get them to come back to you, in Kongs to keep them occupied or simply thrown on the floor or across the garden so they use their natural scenting and hunting instincts to look for their food!

By law your dog must wear identification in public places usually in the form of a tag on its collar which must include your surname and address.

Just a postcode is not acceptable and although a telephone number is not required by law it is advisable. Even for small dogs 3-4 lines of text can be printed on both sides of a tiny tag so there is no excuse. It is therefore important to get your puppy used to wearing a collar from a young age. Please ask at reception if you would like to order a tag.

In addition, we strongly recommend getting your puppy microchipped around the time of their 2nd vaccination and from 2016 it will be compulsory for all dogs to be microchipped. This involves inserting a small chip (about the size of a grain of rice) into the scruff of your puppy’s neck. Once chipped your details will be held in a national database so should your puppy ever get lost, they can be scanned and traced back to you via your contact details.

Therefore it is very important to keep your contact details up to date with the database company.