Puppy training should start when your puppy is five weeks old, which means it starts before your puppy comes home. The first eight weeks, while the litter is still with the breeder, are when the foundational software gets installed. Wait for pickup day and you have already missed the fastest learning window your dog will ever have.
Most families do exactly that. They spend the weeks before homecoming buying beds and arguing about names, then start "training" somewhere around week ten, usually the day after the first puddle on the rug. It is not wrong. You did what everyone does. But you can do much better, and spring litters are being reserved right now, so this is the moment to know it.
The first eight weeks are not a waiting room
A puppy's brain in those first weeks is doing the fastest development of its life. Noises, surfaces, handling, mild frustrations, recovery from small startles: every one of those experiences is wiring the adult dog's ability to cope with a world it has not seen yet.
Think of it as a sponge that is still growing. The more the world soaks in now, the bigger the sponge gets, and the more new things your adult dog can absorb without falling apart. A puppy who met vacuum cleaners, rain, car rides and strange floors before eight weeks does not just cope with those specific things. They cope better with everything, including things they never saw.
That work happens at the breeder's house. Which is why who your breeder is matters more than which puppy you point at, and why the weeks before homecoming are working weeks, not waiting weeks.
What you can actually do from a distance
Plenty, if the breeder is willing. Ask what the litter is being exposed to. Send a blanket that smells like your home. Ask for the crate to appear before homecoming, for car sounds, for different floor textures. A good breeder is already doing most of this and will happily tell you about it. A breeder who bristles at the questions has told you something important too.
And prepare your own side properly. Not the shopping list. The plan: where the puppy sleeps, what the first week's routine looks like, who does what at 6am. Puppies do not arrive with problems. They arrive into households that either have a structure or don't, and by week sixteen the difference is visible from across the street.
Raise the dog you want, not the puppy in front of you
"Dogs do not grow out of things. You build them, or you fix them later."
From day one, picture the calm adult dog you are actually hoping for, and build toward that. Dogs do not grow out of things. You build them, or you fix them later, and fixing later is my day job, so believe me when I say building is cheaper.
This is exactly why my Online Puppy Program starts at five weeks old, before your puppy comes home. Nine weeks, two video catch-ups with me, $440, and it works wherever you live, because the early weeks run through your breeder and your preparation, not your postcode. If you are picking up a puppy this spring, the window is open now. It closes quietly, three weeks before you ever hold your dog.