What to buy for a new puppy, and what to skip

The week before a puppy arrives is when people spend the most money and make the worst decisions. Everything looks necessary. Almost none of it is.

Here is what a dog actually needs in the first year, in the order it becomes useful.

Week one

A collar with your phone number on it. Before the lead, before the bed, before anything. The riskiest period of a dog's life is the first few months, when they have no recall and no road sense, and the single thing that gets a lost dog home is a number a stranger can ring.

Put the number on, not the name. If your dog is loose near a road, you do not want a stranger able to call them by name and draw them across it.

A bed, and somewhere it lives. Puppies sleep eighteen hours a day. What matters is that the bed is always in the same place, so it becomes the place they go when the house gets loud.

Bowls, food, a vet. Not our department.

Week three to four, once the vaccinations are done

A lead. A fixed 1.8m lead teaches loose-lead walking. A retractable one teaches a dog that pulling makes the lead longer, which is the exact opposite of what you want in month two.

A waste-bag holder. Small thing. But a roll of bags loose in a coat pocket is how people end up walking a puppy without any, which happens exactly once before you buy something.

Month four onwards

A harness, if they pull. Not every dog needs one. A dog that walks nicely on a collar is fine on a collar. A dog that hits the end of the lead hard needs the pressure off the throat, and that is a harness with a chest ring.

A drying coat, if you live somewhere wet. This is the one people are most sceptical about and then most evangelical about. It is not for the dog. It is for the hallway.

What to skip

• A puppy-sized collar you will replace in ten weeks. Buy the size they are now with room to move up the holes, and when they run out, we will punch a longer strap or swap it. That is cheaper for you and less waste than three collars.
• A second bed for “upstairs”. Buy it in month six if you still want it. Most people do not.
• Anything with a plastic side-release buckle on a big-breed puppy. They are rated for a static pull, not the shock load of a twenty-kilo adolescent lunging at a cat. Metal, and welded rather than bent.
• A coat, until they are actually cold. Most puppies are not.

The honest note

Of the things we sell, a new puppy needs the collar and, a few weeks later, the lead. That is genuinely it.

The bed, the harness, the drying coat and the travel kit are all real solutions to real problems, but they are problems you do not have yet, and you will judge them much better in three months than you can this week. Nothing on this site is going anywhere.

If you want a hand narrowing it down, send us the breed and how old they are and we will tell you what to get now and what to leave.