I remember the first time we brought our brown-colored Poodle puppy home. We named him Frisbee, and he was about 2 months old at the time. That is the ideal age for puppies to leave their moms, because only at that age can they be weaned of her milk and can eat solid food. Nevertheless we bought milk powder to ensure that he would still get some milk in his diet.

The thing is, puppy training was really hard. Neither my sister nor I were prepared for how hard puppy toilet training was going to be. First time we brought him home he proceeded to wee all over the floor much to my mom's chagrin. We had to clean up after him of course.  We used a special sort of scent spray and lots of newspaper to help with the toilet training process. This is one of my favorite puppy training tips. The scent spray smelt like pee to Frisbee and encouraged him to "do his business" wherever we sprayed the scent. This totally helped us to choose a special place for him to do pee and defecate when we didn't have the time to bring him out to do it.

At first, he couldn't get used to it. And we didn't really know whether the scent spray would work or not. But puppies will be puppies and he learnt pretty fast after a bumpy start. After all, Poodles are really smart dogs.  Every time we thought he was about to pee, we'd quickly carry him to his "toilet". There were a few hits and misses along the way, but he learnt eventually. That sort of puppy training is so important if you want to have a loving relationship with your canine best friend without worrying about whether he's going to pee on your sofa or not. 