Trained and Started Cane Corsos

What every puppy has already done

• Crate. Fed in it, sleeps in it, goes in willingly. This is the thing new owners struggle with most and it’s largely done before you collect.
• House training started. Not finished, because that needs your house and your routine, but they’re on a schedule and understand the idea.
• Lead. Collar and lead introduced, walking a few steps without panic.
• Handling. Feet, ears, mouth and tail touched daily. A 100lb dog that objects to having its paws held is a real problem at the vet and it’s trivial to prevent at eight weeks.
• Household noise. Vacuum, doorbell, television, visitors.

When an older dog suits you better

Occasionally we have a dog past puppyhood looking for the right home. That can be a better buy than a puppy if:

• You want to skip the four-month teething stage entirely.
• You want to know what temperament you’re getting rather than estimating.
• You’re out of the house enough that a puppy would struggle.

The trade is that you’re getting a dog with habits already formed. Ask us what we have and we’ll be straight about why it’s available.

Why the crate is the part that matters

Of everything on that list, crate training is the one that changes your first month most.

A puppy that already regards the crate as its own place sleeps through most of night one, can be left safely for the twenty minutes it takes to do the shopping, and travels without distress. A puppy meeting a crate for the first time in a strange house at eight weeks associates it with everything else that is frightening that day, and undoing that takes weeks.

It also matters years later in ways nobody plans for. A dog that loads calmly into a crate is a dog you can evacuate, board, or take to a vet for an overnight stay without adding fear to whatever is already wrong. That is worth more than it sounds.

Buy the adult-size crate with a divider rather than a puppy one. The rest of what to have ready.

What we deliberately have not done

No formal obedience, no commands drilled, no protection work of any kind.

Some of that is because a nine-week-old cannot meaningfully hold it. Most of it is because those first months are better spent on socialisation than on sits. The window for a puppy learning that the world is ordinary closes at around sixteen weeks, and it does not reopen. Obedience can be taught at any age for the next twelve years.

So we spend the time on the vacuum, the doorbell, visitors arriving, children moving unpredictably, floor surfaces, car journeys and being handled. It looks like less work than a list of commands. It is worth considerably more.

What the eight weeks here actually consist of.