Puppy essentials

A puppy needs less equipment than the internet suggests, so this list is deliberately short. It holds the things worth having in the first six months and nothing sold on the strength of the word puppy alone.

Two rules run through all of it. Buy adult-sized where size does not matter to a puppy — steel bowls, a crate with a divider — and buy cheap where it does, because a collar, a harness and a bed bought at ten weeks are all going in the bin. The second rule is that most of the first month is a timetable rather than a purchase: sleep, and going outside after every meal and every nap.

Soft chew toys are here because teething runs from about twelve weeks to six months and a puppy needs something it can actually compress. Hard nylon and antler chip puppy teeth and are not on this page for that reason.

A Puppy’s First Six Months sets out when each of these becomes useful, and which of the usual puppy purchases to skip.