E1: We thought we were ready - our truth about puppyhood
Listen to episode 1. Available wherever you listen to your podcasts.
We thought we were ready. There were books, routines, feeding plans, sleep plans, and the quiet belief that if we cared enough and followed the right steps, puppyhood would eventually make sense. What we did not expect was how disorienting it could feel to live with a puppy who looked manageable on the surface while unsettling something much deeper underneath.
In this first episode of the Pawplexity Pawdcast, we stay with the parts of early dog ownership that did not match the picture. The sleep deprivation. The overstimulation. The small, daily moments that feel out of proportion to what is happening.
Because puppies do not arrive as blank pages. They arrive with temperament, sensitivity, instinct, and a way of meeting the world that is already their own.
We talk about the myths we carried into those first weeks — that things would feel mostly intuitive, that behaviour would be easy to read, that structure would naturally create calm. And we begin to question some of the assumptions that sit underneath those ideas.
What does calm actually look like? When does routine organise a day, and when does it only contain it? What are puppies responding to — our actions, or something less visible in how we are with them?
Again and again, the conversation returns to a quieter distinction: the difference between what looks fine and what actually feels safe.
A puppy can appear calm and still be working hard to regulate. A puppy can cooperate without feeling at ease. And what settles behaviour on the surface does not always settle the system underneath.
We also talk about raising dogs across countries — in Seattle, New York, Canada, London, and beyond — and how differently dogs are allowed to exist depending on where you are. Not just where they can go, but what kind of relationship to them is considered normal.
Underneath all of it sits a more personal shift. Puppyhood did not just reveal our dogs to us. It revealed us to ourselves — our expectations, our thresholds, our need for certainty, and the speed with which a life can reorganise itself around one small animal.
This is not an episode about getting puppyhood right. It is a conversation about what early life with a dog asks of us before we have language for it, before we have perspective, and before we understand that what looks small from the outside can feel enormous while you are living it.
What surprised you most about puppyhood? What felt harder than expected — even if everything looked fine from the outside? What did you only begin to understand later?
If you would rather sit with this on the page than in your ears, the companion essay is “My truth about Makenzie’s puppyhood”.
If something here stayed with you, the next essay and the next episode arrive every other week, in your inbox. Subscribe here.