Puppy Starter Kit: What to Put In It
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Your puppy has a sock in its mouth and is backing away from you. This kit is the four things that turn that into a trade instead of a chase around the coffee table. You get a small treat to mark the moment the puppy looks away, a better one to offer in exchange, a chew the puppy is allowed to keep, and a pouch you can open without taking your eyes off the dog. It is sized for the first two weeks at home, when leave it and drop it are the only cues doing any real work. The rest of the bundle guides pick up after that.
When a puppy picks up something that is not theirs
Almost every new owner does the same thing on day three. You reach for the thing, the puppy runs, and you have just taught a very fast game. Trade works the other way around. You offer something the puppy would rather have, the puppy opens its mouth on its own, and nobody has to win.
That only works if what you are offering genuinely outranks a sock. Which is the whole reason this kit carries two treats and not one.
What each piece does during a trade
Our Freeze-Dried Cheddar Cheese Bites are the everyday rate. One ingredient, cheddar cheese, freeze-dried in small batches in Malvern, Pennsylvania, in an 8 ounce bag that lasts through a lot of repetitions. Cheddar breaks apart under a thumbnail into pieces smaller than a pea, so a puppy can take forty of them in a session and still eat dinner. Use these for the easy version: puppy looks at a dropped crumb, puppy looks back at you, crumb stays on the floor.
Our Freeze-Dried Beef Liver is the offer. It is single ingredient beef liver, and the smallest bag is 1.5 ounces, which is the one to start with while you find out how fast you go through it. Liver is the one to hold back. If cheddar is what the puppy gets for the easy reps, liver is what shows up the first time it drops something it really wanted to keep.
Air-Dried Chicken Feet give the puppy something to hold that is legitimately its own. They are air-dried chicken feet and nothing else, made here in Malvern, sold in a pack of 6 or 18. Our own sheet describes the texture as crunchy and crispy, with some sharp edges possible since it is a natural product, and notes that the larger duck feet last longer for bigger dogs. A short chew is what you want for practice, because trade works better as a lot of small repetitions than one long one. Skip these if your puppy is under about 15 pounds, or hand over half a foot at a time until it grows into them.
The One-Hand Treat Training Pouch is the piece people skip and then buy two weeks later. Up Dog Shop lists it at 3.9 by 3.3 by 1.7 inches with a zipless squeeze-to-open mouth in food-grade silicone. You want that because the trade window is about two seconds wide. A pocket costs you three. Up Dog Shop items are sold and shipped by Up Dog Shop through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
One thing we deliberately left off the list
No clicker. Plenty of good kits include one, and marker training is a real method with real evidence behind it. But a first-time owner holding a leash, a puppy and a sock does not have a third hand for a clicker, and a spoken yes does the same job badly enough to be fine. Add one later once the mechanics feel easy. Our guide to training with treats covers when a marker starts earning its keep.
Your first seven days with this kit
Days one and two, do nothing but pay for attention. Puppy looks at you, cheddar. That is the entire exercise.
Days three and four, introduce the chicken foot while you sit on the floor nearby. Let the puppy have it. Do not reach. Then offer a piece of liver at nose height and wait; most puppies drop the foot within a few seconds because liver smells like more. When the foot hits the floor, say yes, pay, and give the foot straight back. That last part is what makes it a trade rather than a robbery.
Days five through seven, move it to something boring you left out on purpose, like a balled-up receipt. Same sequence. By the end of the week you want the puppy bringing you things, which is a strange and excellent problem to have.
One rule the whole thing rests on: never chase, and never grab at a puppy holding something. Trade only works because the dog is choosing.
Fewer bags on the counter
Bought separately this ends up as two treat bags from us, a chew, and a pouch from a partner, arriving in two shipments. Together it replaces the usual first-month drift of buying a soft training treat, discovering it crumbles in a pocket, then buying a pouch, then buying a second treat because the first one stopped being interesting. Two values and one chew covers the whole leave it and trade sequence without a fourth bag.
If the practice chew starts disappearing whole once your puppy gets bigger, the Gear eDispenser holds a chew inside a rubber shell and slows the whole thing down. That is an add, not a requirement. SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC items are sold and shipped by SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
To swap either treat for a different protein, the rest of our freeze-dried dog treats work the same way in the same pouch, and Explore filters them by protein and format.
Questions we get at the counter
Three that come up almost every time someone buys this combination.
How small should I break the treats?
Smaller than you think. A pea is the ceiling for a puppy under six months. You are paying for repetitions, not feeding a meal, and a puppy that fills up at rep twelve stops working.
My puppy will not let go of anything. Now what?
Start with an object it does not care about and an offer it cares about a lot, which usually means liver rather than cheddar. If it still will not trade, the object is too valuable or you are too close. Back up a step. Teaching drop it walks through the same progression in more detail.
Can I use this outside?
Once it works indoors, yes, and the pouch is the reason you can. Outdoors the distractions are louder, so plan on going back to liver for a while. Roadside leave it covers the parking-lot version, which is the one that eventually matters.
Related guides
Three kits for the same stretch of raising a puppy, each one a different problem. The whole set is on the puppy cluster page.
