Our Corgi Teeny is 2 years old now but we have many happy memories of her time as a puppy.
Choosing a Corgi puppy is the best decision you’ll ever make because they are cute, very strong minded and incredibly loyal and loving animals.
Corgi Puppies have a lot of energy and a lot to learn about the world around them. I want to show you some Corgi characteristics, look at how easy they are to train and talk about their aggression, energy and tails.
I hope you’ll enjoy the stories and photos of our Corgi puppy Teeny that we will share with you in this article and across our website.
4 reasons why you should get a corgi puppy
We are dog lovers and I’m sure we could come up with 5 reasons you should buy or adopt any puppy.
- Cuteness – Corgis are incredibly cute, you can’t help but fall in love with their tiny legs, long body, cute face and tail.
- Loyalty – Loyalty is common with most dog breeds. You are part of your dogs family / pack and a Corgi puppy will always miss you when you are out and welcome you back home again with a wagging tail every time.
- Clever – Corgis are very clever. Having lived with our Corgi teeny for over 2 year we love how clever she is. She quickly learns new tricks and also understands what is happening and will try to find ways to sneakily get her own way. One example of this is when there is an exciting piece of food on the grass outside. She knows she isn’t allowed to eat it but she knows if she rolls over onto her back and wriggles around, she can position herself closer to the food and try to sneakily lick or eat it without being seen.
- Independent & strong minded – Corgis are very independent and strong minded. This is one of my favourite characteristics of Teeny. She has her own character and will try to make her own rules, get her own way and this can be really interesting and funny to watch, especially if she is well trained and this isn’t her default behaviour in every situation.
Characteristics of a Corgi puppy – breed information
Corgi puppies are individuals so the experience we share about our Corgi puppy Teeny may be a little different from any experience you have parenting your Corgi puppies.
Even if some experience are different I think you’ll enjoy learning about our experience and find that a lot of the behaviours, hyperactivity and other characteristics will be similar and give you a good idea about what it’s like to live with a Corgi puppy in your home.
Average life expectancy | 12 – 15 years |
Weight / length / height | As an adult dog our Corgi Teeny weighs 14 kg but at 3 months old she weighed around 4.5kg. |
Colour | Fawn, red, black and tan, sable and black and white. |
Behaviour | In our experience our Corgi Teeny is very independent and strong minded. She will try her best to get her own way before listening and will push the limits of what she is and isn’t allowed to do as much as possible especially when we have asked her to keep away from food. We trained Teeny to stay at the kitchen door and not step into the kitchen but she will take a step further into the kitchen and lie down when we aren’t looking. Corgis are intelligent and not afraid to be dominant with other dogs even when the other dog is much bigger. Teeny isn’t often afraid of other dogs unless they have a fierce bark or behave aggressively. Corgi puppies love to roll around with other dogs in very physical and aggressive looking play. |
Training | In our experience Corgis are very clever dogs. Corgi’s used to be herding dogs and respond well to learning new commands. When she was a young puppy our Corgi Teeny quickly learnt to sit, lie down and roll onto her back when we rewarded her using treats until it wasn’t necessary any more. |
Grooming | Corgis have a short fluffy double coat that is easy to groom. A corgis fur coat doesn’t grow too long so you’ll need to give them a wash and haircut every 4 to 8 weeks. We usually take Teeny every 4 weeks, but if she gets really dirty we sometimes wash her ourselves. |
Bringing home a Corgi puppy – how to prepare
When we made the decision to bring our Corgi puppy Teeny into our home we spent a lot of time researching and thinking about what we would need so she could be comfortable. Before I give you some more details, here are 5 things you will need to prepare yourself for bringing home a Corgi puppy.
- Dog bed
- Bowl
- Dog water bottle
- Puppy crate
- Suitable dog food
- Puppy potty training pads
Are Corgi puppies easy to train
Yes, Corgi puppies are easy to train even for inexperienced Corgi owners. In our experience training our first Corgi Teeny was a mostly smooth, fun and easy experience.
However, this wasn’t the case in all the situations we tried to train and influence her behaviour in. The easy part of training a Corgi puppy is training them to respond to simple commands where you ask them to sit, lie down or stay.
We used a treat to train Teeny to respond to these commands and she quickly understood what we were asking of her. In our experience and from speaking to friends and reading articles from dog trainers we now know that behavioural training is the most difficult part of puppy training.
If your dog is eating food outside, being aggressive towards other dogs or behaving in other unwanted ways that go beyond sitting or lying down you may find these behaviours much harder to teach.
Even though we found training a Corgi puppy easy at times, this was only because we were very patient, spent lots of time training and were consistent in the way we rewarded treats and the verbal and physical cues we used to command a certain action or behaviour.
We struggled with behavioural training and at times we still do. We opted to try to use reward based training methods and try to avoid any physical punishments.
Corgi puppy hyperactive Zoomies
Corgi puppies have a lot of energy to burn and it is common for puppies to have a spell of the zoomies before bed in the evening.
The Zoomies are known as FRAP, Frenetic random activity period. When we first saw Teeny doing this in the evening she would dart around the room turning in circles, running back and forth, jumping up to try and get on the sofa and any number of different changes of directions.
The hyperactive zoomies are a lot of fun to watch and we understood why our Corgi was behaving this way.
I know a lot of dog owners are afraid of this behaviour at first because it can look like your dog is out of control and playing more aggressively.
Teeny was happy to nibble on our toes and jump onto our legs during her evening energy burning sessions and I will admit she did chase me and cause me to jump onto the safety of the sofa on a few occasions.
Are Corgi puppies born with tails
Yes, corgi puppies are born with tails. However, it has long been a common practice to dock a corgis tail when they are very young. As far as we are aware the cutting of a Corgis tail took place when they were used in the fields to herd larger animals on farmland.
Farmers found that a corgis long tail would get in the way and could be stepped on by large livestock so cutting it helped stop this happening.
Having no tail doesn’t seem to affect Teeny’s balance and movement, she moves quickly and balances well on narrow walls when we walk her along the riverbank.
The Queen of England is famous for having many Corgis and is known to be a lover of the Pembroke Welsh Corgi breed.
Corgi puppy aggression
Corgis are very independent and strong minded but this doesn’t mean they are aggressive even though their bossy behaviour may appear as though they are. In our experience with teeny our Corgi, she likes to let other dogs know she is in charge and will play on her terms and will make sure she is the most dominant.
I would say Corgi puppies are not aggressive but are very confident, feisty and can also be quite stubborn. Teeny doesn’t often back down when confronted and her herding nature makes her more likely to appear aggressive then a more gentle breed of dog.
This confidence and boldness sometimes appears as though she is willing to introduce herself to any other people or dogs without fear. Corgis are very social dogs, if it is on their terms.
Our experience bringing home a corgi puppy
Now We have given you some ideas about what it’s like to bring home and live with a Corgi puppy, we are going to share our experience of bringing Teeny home and the situations we encountered when she was a puppy.
We brought teeny home on the 19th of September 2018 when she was 9 weeks old. She flew all the way from Beijing in China to a city called Wuxi where we were living at that time. This day was a week day, I was so excited to go and pick her up.
On the way I was talking to the taxi driver, showing him photos of my Corgi puppy before I’d even met her in person. I couldn’t stop talking about her to everybody, I’d been dreaming of a puppy all my life.
At the airport I had to navigate my way to find the pick up area for dogs which is different from the human pick up area. I was waiting in the wrong place and realised there was no way my little puppy in her cage, could walk out of arrivals! so I asked the security guard and he looked confused and asked another security man.
Eventually I found the cargo department where you can collect animals in a very simple, dull looking area of the airport full of express trucks. The office was tiny, maybe 10 square metres, these details don’t matter but I spent 2 hours there anxiously checking where my precious little puppy was.
It was a really hot September day and there was no air conditioning. From a distance I saw a pet travel box and I asked them to double check if it’s my Corgi puppy several times, it turns out it was a cat.
Eventually my hero appeared calling my name loudly from outside and I ran outside and met the cutest little fluffy corgi puppy i’d ever seen. Her cute puppy voice whined and barked at me, then i put my finger into her cage and she licked my finger!… My dream had come true.
Here is a photo of my corgi puppy teeny in a taxi on her way home for the first time.
Bringing a Corgi puppy home
When we arrived home I used scissors to open her travel cage and she slowly walked out with her tiny little paws no further than 2 puppy paw steps and immediately announced her arrival by pooping on the floor! luckily it was small and hard and easy to clean.
I thought cleaning poop would be the most challenging part, but I thought to myself, it’s not so bad, after a few weeks it becomes second nature. You love your puppy and will do anything necessary to keep them clean, fed, warm and happy. Even if this means accepting a few poops, nibbles and naughty behaviour.
The airport company threw away her dog food so soon after this was my first experience in a pet store buying puppy food. This was a learning experience where I was taught a lot about feeding and handling puppies.
When Teeny first arrived we fed her Orijen six fish dog food. The fish flavour and fish oils are particular good for keeping your dogs hair healthy, and this dog food came highly recommended. Teeny sniffed the food and wouldn’t eat it.
The pet shop owner suggested we add some water to the food to make it more smelly and easier to eat. Teeny began to eat it and ever since she hasn’t stopped loving every second she spends eating food!
I built this beautiful pink puppy house and she fell asleep. This night was the first time I experienced a puppy running in her sleep and making the funny whimpering dream noises.
After a few days of settling into her new home, we first experienced our corgis puppy Teeny having tear stains ( wet patch beside her eyes on the inside and down her face). I thought maybe it was the food causing this so we changed to the Orijen puppy mixture rather than the Orijen five fish flavour and after a few days the tear stains disappeared and we never experienced these again.
Corgi puppy training
Training began soon after she arrived. Once we chose a name once of the first things we trained Teeny to do was to respond to her name by looking at us or coming to us and then we would reward her with a small dog treat. Corgis are clever it she didn’t take long to learn to respond to her name.
Corgi puppy bed
Teeny slept in a pink and white striped soft padded dog bed that came with her puppy house and then we had a touch dog bed. At first Teeny wouldn’t sleep on her mattress and always slept on her puppy cage floor or on her potty pad.
We decided to buy a bigger dog bed, the Petkit deep sleep mattress that took up most of the space in her puppy house so she would sleep on a warmer surface. Outside of her puppy house we also had a large puppy bed for her to rest during the day.
Corgi puppies first walk outside
When we first took Teeny outside she was curious about everything, especially the sensation of the prickly and soft grass underneath her tiny paws making her jump and roll around, enjoying the new sensation.
When Teeny for met other puppies and adult dogs she loved sniffing, rolling around and nibbling on other dogs neck area. Don’t be alarmed if your corgi puppy starts playing with other dogs in a way that looks quite aggressive.
Puppies will nibble and gently bite each other in the neck area, this is normal behaviour for dogs, just watch carefully for any signs that the play is getting out of hand. Rolling around and wrestling each other onto their backs in another fun way dogs play and make friends.