15 Ways to Love Your Puppy (& Build Trust) +How It Loves You!

Is this your first experience of nurturing a young puppy?

You may have grown up with dogs, but is this your first experience of being the primary caregiver?

Adopting a puppy catapults you into a new arena; like a first-time parent, you are responsible for the health and well-being of a small creature that is wholly dependent on you.

Like you, your puppy needs an emotional bond to thrive.

And what your puppy needs most is love because you want to treat it well and make it happy when you love your puppy.

So how do you love a puppy?

Hour by Hour

A relationship between you and your puppy builds through every interaction. You and your puppy need to bond and learn how to be with each other.

You need to cover the basics of providing food, water, exercise, and a safe place to sleep, but the emotional bond needs many loving interactions.

For your puppy to trust you, you need to be trustworthy, and love does not appear instantly.

How Can You Build a Loving Trusting Relationship with Your Puppy?

Humans can use words to express feelings, but words are not as important as actions, even in the parent-to-child relationship.

Your puppy will learn to associate some meanings with your words with training, but primarily your puppy will understand you through your actions.

The top ways you can build a loving, trusting relationship with your puppy are kindness and consistency, but how does this translate into action?

#1 Feed Your Puppy (with Care)

Obviously, your puppy needs food, but feeding your puppy is more than throwing some puppy mix in a bowl and leaving it to fend for itself.

Food is essential, and with few exceptions, most puppies are interested in eating.

In the right quantities and at the right time, the right food provides your puppy with a pleasurable experience and plenty of energy.

Neglecting the job of delivering this essential element by using the wrong food or letting your puppy go hungry will result in an unhappy puppy.

The most basic way to demonstrate love for your puppy is to understand and provide for its dietary needs.

Mealtimes are a positive interaction with your puppy where it sees you being the loving provider.

If you want to build a loving bond with your puppy, be the person who feeds it.

#2 Feed by Hand

Although your puppy will eat most of its meals from a bowl, training treats and snacks are ideal for hand feeding.

These hand-fed treats are still part of the calorie allowance and not in addition to it.

Working out how many calories your puppy needs per day and reserving a proportion of them to hand-fed treats allows you to meet your puppy’s dietary needs and use it as a bonding exercise.

The treats reward the puppy for spending time with you and good behavior.

The act of allowing the puppy to eat from your hand (remember to wash often) associates your touch and smell with good things.

Your puppy’s willingness to take food from your hand will allow you to give the puppy medicine if necessary and help establish voice commands when you start to train your puppy.

Try and feed various treat foods by hand and see which appeals most to your puppy.

The food it likes best is the treat you can use to ensure that your puppy comes to you eagerly, even when playing outside.

#3 Create a Routine

Your puppy is happiest when it has a regular pattern to its day and night.

Many people will laugh about the fact that their adult dog seems to be able to watch the clock and knows when it is time to go for a walk or when their owner is coming home.

A routine is reassuring for your puppy, and an excellent routine with regular fun sessions means your puppy is comfortable with the expectations of its behavior.

Establishing a good routine of exercise, play, feeding, and sleeping when your dog is a puppy will make it easier for you (and your puppy) to live together when you need to be able to leave your dog alone.

#4 Greetings Matter

When you see your puppy in the morning, make a fuss of it before you stumble over to make coffee or eat breakfast.

Combine that morning greeting with a bathroom break and maybe some outdoor playtime but make it clear to your puppy that you are delighted to see it.

Don’t fuss when you leave your puppy alone, but be cheerful and happy to see it when you return.

The happy greeting with full-body wriggles, tail wagging, and play bows from your puppy is part of how your puppy establishes a bond with you as pack alpha.

#5 Regular Brushing

Even if your puppy does not need a regular brush because it has short hair, a daily rub-down with a soft brush allows you to touch your puppy purposefully.

If your puppy will require regular grooming sessions as an adult, starting a touch routine for grooming will help.

Spending time grooming your puppy helps keep its coat in excellent condition, but more importantly, it accustoms your puppy to your soft and gentle touch and helps you form that loving bond.

A daily grooming session lets you check that your puppy does not have an injury, sore spots, or ticks.

#6 Meaningful Touch

An old married couple can show affection with a mere touch in passing, but you need to give it some dedicated attention when you pet or stroke your puppy.

Please make time to snuggle with your puppy throughout the day in the way it likes best.

Every puppy is an individual; your puppy may want to sleep on your knee and have its ears scratched or tummy tickled.

The way to build a loving bond with your puppy is to touch it in a way it enjoys regularly.

The physical contact is comforting for your puppy and, as a bonus for you – stroking a puppy is known to reduce blood pressure and promote happiness in humans.

When you express your affection for your puppy with touch, give it your full attention.

Your puppy will notice if you are not present because you are busy doing something else.

#7 Walk for the Puppy’s Benefit

When you take your puppy out for a walk, remember that the walk meets the puppy’s needs rather than your need for exercise.

Your puppy’s bones are still developing, and it is essential to not over-exercise as you can cause issues in later life.

Walking allows your puppy to explore its environment through scent, meet new experiences, and encounter other dogs.

The general rule is to take your puppy for a walk at least once a day (preferably twice) but no more than five minutes for each month of its life. A puppy at three months will thrive with two walks of fifteen minutes each.

Walking is different from playing in the garden; it involves wearing a lead or harness and obeying (in time) a set of rules like not tugging or waiting for the instruction to cross the road.

Walking is a combination of the opportunity to have fun and go to the bathroom.

Prioritize the walking experience to ensure it provides the maximum benefit for your puppy.

#8 Play with Your Puppy

Your puppy learns through play, and you can play with toys inside and outside.

Play can be tiring for your puppy, so keep your play sessions short and not immediately after a meal when your puppy needs quiet time to digest.

Learn how your puppy likes to play – is it a seeker and finder, a fetcher, or a tugger?

Offer some ways for a puppy to play with you and others where it can amuse itself.

Even when your puppy is an adult dog, it is still going to want some bonding time through play, and now is when you both work out what are fun games to play.

#9 Teaching and Learning is Fun

The number of commands and tricks your puppy needs to learn depends on your lifestyle and how you need your puppy to behave.

Your puppy is not a robot, and some breeds are more independent than others. You can pick up a toy breed, but a Rottweiler is not easy to physically restrain if it misbehaves.

Plus, some dogs (as adults) need to obey commands because they can cause serious harm if out of control.

You can opt for puppy training and socialization classes as a fun way for your puppy to meet other dogs in a controlled environment.

You can hire one-on-one coaching to learn how to teach your puppy to follow your commands or learn from videos or books.

Some commands are essential, and some may be the hallmark of an excellently trained dog but not suit you or your puppy.

A working dog needs a different level of training to obey commands than a family pet.

Training sessions need to be short, purposeful, and gentle with rewards, examples, and no shouting or punishment.

Most people agree that the essential commands are:

Sit and possibly lie down.
Stay.
Come back or recall.
Walking on the leash without pulling.

Depending on you and your puppy’s temperament, you can add in a whole range of other commands and tricks – weaving, jumping, finding, retrieving, and even dancing.

#10 Create and Respect the Safe Zone

Like you, your puppy needs a space where they can go to be safe to sleep or play quietly.

A place where no one (and that includes you) bothers them.

A place where they can retreat if the world is too busy or frightening, providing and respecting your puppy’s safe space helps form the trust bond because you treat your puppy with respect.

#11 Watch Your Tone

It’s not what you say but how you say it that matters to your puppy.

Your puppy’s understanding of human language links to the sounds and gestures you make and the emotional tone of your voice.

If you want to avoid creating a fearful timid puppy, try not to use an angry voice on the puppy or other family members.

Your puppy is sensitive to how you express yourself, plus a friendly, relaxed tone is better for your health as well as your puppy.

#12 Be Gentle and Kind

It doesn’t matter what your puppy does; physical punishment and aggressive shouting will not positively change the puppy’s behavior or build a trusting bond.

Suppose you find a pee puddle on the floor and choose to smack and shout at your puppy for this biological function – what does it teach the puppy?

From the puppy’s viewpoint, it shows that you are an aggressive threat to be avoided.

There is no association between peeing on the floor and your behavior in the puppy’s mind.

If there is pee on the floor, your puppy needs more bathroom breaks, and you need to pay attention to the puppy signals that indicate it needs to go out.

When your puppy pees on the floor when you come in, it is excited to see you and will outgrow this behavior with maturity.

There will be times when you need to issue a sharp, loud command when the puppy is in the process of misbehaving, but you need to be consistent in your approach and generally tolerant.

#13 Spend Quality Time

Dogs are social animals; they like to be with their packmates.

Although your puppy enjoys walks and playtime, it also needs to simply hang out in the same space.

Your puppy likes to spend quantity time with you; it is happy to sleep in the same room while you work on a report or cook dinner.

Your puppy is happy to wander around in the garden while you get some weeding done; from your puppy’s perspective, all time is a good time.

#14 Brain Training

Depending on your breed, your puppy may need to exercise its brain and body.

The more intelligent the puppy, the more likely it is to develop destructive behavior if bored.

Devote a daily play session to challenge your puppy to solve a problem.

You can hide a favorite toy (or person) and encourage it to work on its finding skills. You can invest in puzzle toys and make your puppy work to obtain a treat or food.

This joint activity acts as a team-building exercise for you and your pup as you work together to achieve a goal.

You can work on a fun new trick or sequence, set up an obstacle course, or any other activity that gets your puppy problem-solving.

Your puppy will enjoy the contact time and the opportunity to use its brain.

#15 Enjoy Each Other’s Company

The essential tip to creating a loving bond is for you and your puppy to enjoy the time you spend together.

If you are happy to be with your puppy, your puppy will reciprocate your joy.

A loving bond is most likely to form if you love spending time with your puppy, even if you only sit together and watch the sunset.

How Do You Know That Your Puppy Loves You?

Puppies are not shy about expressing affection to their favorite person.

Your puppy’s body language clearly indicates how happy it is to see you:

Enthusiastic greeting – your puppy will display excitement through jumping up, happy vocalizing, body wriggles (literally shaking with excitement), and tail wagging.
Looking for physical contact – pushing a nose into your hand (asking for a pet) or leaning into your leg. Your puppy may also jump onto your knee and seek to lick your face.
Sleeping near you – a sign of trust and affection.
Checking in – if you are out of the room too long, your puppy will come to find out what you are doing and maybe try to join in.
Bringing you a toy – like humans, puppies like to present their loved ones with gifts, mainly as an invitation to play.
Rolling over – a puppy’s message saying that it loves you by presenting its vulnerable belly. Plus, this means it may get an extra tummy tickle.
Chewing your slippers – not the most desirable display of affection, but puppies show their love for their people by seeking out objects that smell like them.
Peeing with excitement on seeing you – fortunately, your puppy will outgrow this behavior. It has nothing to do with needing the bathroom and everything to do with recognizing that you are home. Dogs use urine as a scent marker to signal their emotional state.
Licking – a lick on your hand or face is the equivalent of a kiss to your puppy.

A happy puppy bounces up to you whenever it sees you displays affection and trust.

Last Word

If you spend time with your puppy, you will build love and trust through a shared bond and mutual affection.

When you love your puppy, it is only natural that it will love you right back.

Be kind, have fun, and love will grow naturally between you and your puppy and persist for the whole of its life.

You will always be number one to your puppy.