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Let the excitement begin! You’ve spent weeks, months or even longer searching for the perfect pet. You’ve purchased a rugged water bowl, a rustic food bowl, a cozy doggie bed and a 50-pound bag of dogilicious dog food. You believe you have all the supplies you need and your family is ready to bring home its newest addition. So, you must be thinking, How do I prepare my house for a new dog? Well, here at Dog Gone Amazing (a comprehensive Dog Training and Education Center in Reno, NV), we’ve got a few helpful tips as you prepare to bring Rosco home.

Obviously, there’s a lot to consider when taking on the responsibility of bringing home a new dog of any age. The following four tips are relevant whether you’re puppy-proofing your house or preparing your house for a new dog that’s grown out of the puppy phase:

1. The Big Things- Do a simple walk-through of each room, being conscious of anything that was acceptable pre-pet, but is now something that will likely get spilled, destroyed, or ingested. Is your kitchen garbage can able to stand up to a dog who desperately wants to eat/play with its contents? Do you have exposed electrical cords that are ripe for chewing? Are you one open closet door away from losing all your favorite shoes?

2. The Little Things- Now concentrate on the smaller items that you don’t take a second look at but that Rosco will love to explore if you haven’t considered dog-proofing your home. Do your bathrooms have smaller trashcans in them with plenty of Kleenex, floss, and wrappers to spread all over the house? Are your cleaning supplies easy to get into if you forget to close a door? Do you have any medicine bottles that Rosco can chew into? These are some of the concerns that a new dog can find to have you wishing you would have been more thorough.

3. The Expensive Things- With as many electronics as we all seem to keep in our homes, it’s easy to create an accident-prone environment unknowingly. Electronics have cords, and even if your new dog is trained enough to not chew them, he/she is still not above tripping over them and pulling your computer, TV, speakers, or Blu-Ray player onto the ground. Your new dog is going to be excited as he/she gets used to their new home. Soon, Rosco will be running around the new territory. Leaving cords out for him to trip over is setting him up to be the bad guy–and leaving you in need of buying a new laptop.

4. The Clean Things- You and your family know your house rules: No shoes on the carpet, don’t bring sticks in the house, no feet on the couch, if you have mud on you wash off in the garage. However, Rosco didn’t read the house-rules manual. To him, all of these are fair play. The couch looks like a great place to chew on a stick after running around in the mud all morning. These are rules you can train your dog to follow, but early on you need to take the precautions for a dog who doesn’t know his boundaries just yet.

Next time you discover that your beloved pooch has spread the bathroom garbage contents across the living room or muddied your carpet, and you’re thinking How do I dog proof my home?, you’ll at least have somewhere to start with the four tips we shared here. Best of luck with your new dog!