How to raise a puppy when you work full time alone?
Working full time with a puppy leaves owners without daytime support or a way to handle midday meals, long hours alone, and irregular feeding schedules. Without local dog walkers, daycares, or family to break up the day, people are left struggling to figure out a realistic schedule or resorting to tools like automatic feeders to manage missed meals.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using family support to watch the puppy 1-2 days a week
- 2Hiring a dog walker or sitter occasionally
- 3Using a puppy pen with a toilet area
- 4Transitioning the puppy from three meals down to two meals a day
- 5Increasing the food portions of the remaining meals
- 6Hiring a dog walker, pet sitter, or using a drop-in check-in service
- 7Sending the puppy to doggy daycare
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“i start a new job tomorrow. He’s used to being fed three times a day, 6am, 12pm and 6pm, with my new job he’ll be missing lunch at 12, so is it worth it to buy an automatic feeder so he isn’t missing lunch?”source ↗
“Neither of us have large support systems, and we live in a fairly small, poor town, so there aren’t any doggy daycares or dog walkers/ sitters around.”source ↗
“I have been considering an automatic feeder but mostly because my puppy barely eats in the morning to the point of vomiting bile in the afternoon. It’s very random and difficult to get a schedule even though I’m mostly home.”source ↗
“I'm trying to understand what is actually realistic for someone who works full time.”source ↗
“There will inevitably be periods where he's alone for several hours. I can't realistically arrange for someone to visit at 10am, 12pm, 2pm etc. every single working day”source ↗
“does this sound like a workable arrangement for a Maltese, provided I use the six weeks to build up his ability to settle alone and have family/paid help to break up the longer days where necessary?”source ↗
Where this came up
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