How to puppy-proof your home

Choose the zone first. An exercise pen or a small gated room near where the family spends the day, with the crate inside, water, a bed and two or three chews, is where the puppy goes whenever nobody can watch it. Cornell's Riney Canine Health Center recommends baby gates to limit where a puppy roams so you can keep an eye on it, and a crate for the times you cannot. The rest of this page is about the rooms the puppy visits with you.

Then get down on the floor. Kneel or lie at the height of a puppy's nose in each room and look along the baseboards, under the sofa and behind the television. You will see what the puppy sees: the cable loop, the dropped hair tie, the shoe under the bed, the cat's bowl, the bag on the floor. Write it down room by room, and work through the list before the puppy comes home.

The kitchen and the handbag hold most of the poisons a puppy is likely to find. The ASPCA's list of people foods to keep from pets names xylitol, a sweetener used in gum, candy, baked goods and toothpaste, along with grapes and raisins, chocolate and caffeine, onions and garlic, macadamia nuts, alcohol and raw yeast dough. A puppy does not need to reach a counter to find them; a bag on the floor or a lunch box at nose height will do.

Winter adds a Cape Ann layer. Gloucester sidewalks and driveways are salted from the first storm, and the AVMA's cold-weather guidance warns that dogs pick up de-icers and antifreeze on their paws and lick them off, and that antifreeze spills should be cleaned up quickly. Keep a towel by the door for paws and boots, and store the ice melt where the puppy cannot reach the bag. If you think your puppy has eaten something on these lists, call your vet or ASPCA Animal Poison Control at (888) 426-4435, which may charge a fee.

If your puppy swallows a sock, a battery, a pill or anything on the poison lists, call your vet straight away, or the nearest emergency hospital after hours; the Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital in Woburn is open 24 hours, and the City of Gloucester keeps a list of local emergency vet offices. Do not wait for symptoms. A puppy that keeps escaping its pen, chewing the walls or crying in its zone is a training question, and that one is ours.

Tiny Tails Puppy School, for pups from 8 to 16 weeks, works on settling, chewing habits and the routines that make puppy-proofing easier, and the one-week Foundation board and train covers crate and household manners for puppies and young dogs. Gabriella Pope sets the plan after a short assessment, with sessions from $94. Once your puppy's vaccines are complete and its city license issued, a $33 half day of daycare at 210 Eastern Ave gives the house a few quiet hours.