The First Day

As exciting as it is to bring a new dog home, the first day (first several days, really) should be as tranquil and disturbance-free as you can make them. Remember: your new foster pup has just finished an exhausting journey over hundreds of miles and several weeks of stressful, unpredictable changes (losing his original home, possibly spending who-knows-how-long as a stray, getting picked up by animal control or the shelter's front desk, spending days or weeks in the noisy confines of a shelter kennel, going elsewhere for a 10- to 14-day pre-transport quarantine, and then getting uprooted yet again to travel north). He doesn't know who you are, he doesn't know what this place is, and he doesn't know why he's here or what's going to happen next. The very first thing you need to do is establish a consistent routine in a way that lets your foster pup know he's landed somewhere safe.

Actually, the very first thing you need to do is probably let the dog outside for a potty. I'll cover this in more detail in the Housebreaking section, but especially in the beginning, it's important to take the dog out frequently (as in every hour on the hour, if not more often), let him sniff around for as long as he needs, and always be ready to reward heavily for pottying outside.