Winter Care for Puppies in Kolkata: What Actually Changes

Kolkata does not have a hard winter. Daytime in December and January is pleasant, and most years the nights settle somewhere between ten and fourteen degrees, with a handful of colder spells. For an adult dog that is nothing. For a puppy of eight to sixteen weeks — which cannot yet hold its body temperature the way an adult does — it is enough to matter, and the changes it needs are small, specific and mostly about the night.

This is what we tell every buyer who collects a puppy from us between November and February.

Where the puppy sleeps is the whole story

Almost every winter problem we hear about comes back to one thing: a puppy sleeping directly on a marble or mosaic floor. Those floors pull heat out of a small body all night long, and a puppy that is cold at 3am cries, does not rest, and starts the day already run down.

• Get the bed off the floor. A folded blanket is not enough on its own. A low cot, a thick foam mat, or even a cardboard box lined with old towels breaks the contact with the floor. That one change does more than any sweater.
• Give it a covered corner. Puppies choose warmth by instinct. A bed with sides, or a crate with a blanket over the top and back, holds body heat and stops the draught that runs along every Kolkata floor once the fans go off.
• Keep it out of the direct line of a window or door. The cold air that comes in under a door at night is at exactly puppy height.

If you have a thick-coated breed — an Indian Spitz, a Pomeranian, a Husky or a Samoyed — you will notice it ignores the bed and sleeps on the floor anyway. Let it. That coat exists for weather far colder than this.

Feeding: a little more, not a lot more

A puppy burns extra energy keeping warm, so appetite rises slightly in winter. Increase the daily amount by roughly ten per cent if the puppy is finishing every meal and looking for more, and watch its waist rather than the bowl. A puppy should be lean and bouncy, not round.

Two things change more than the quantity:

• Water intake drops in cool weather, and puppies on dry food can get constipated or produce very concentrated urine. Keep the bowl fresh, offer water after every meal, and soak the kibble in a little warm water for the youngest puppies.
• Do not switch to “warming” home food on advice from relatives. A sudden change in diet causes diarrhoea at any time of year, and a puppy with diarrhoea in winter loses heat fast. Whatever it has been eating, keep eating it, and read our guide to what to feed an eight-week-old puppy before you change anything.

Walks move to the middle of the day

Summer in Kolkata means walks before 8am and after 6pm. Winter is the opposite. The best time is between about ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, when the sun has burned off the fog and the ground is dry. This suits a puppy’s schedule anyway: it is awake and ready to play after its late-morning nap.

Remember that a puppy that has not finished its vaccination course should not be on public ground at all, winter or not. Our post on when a puppy can go outside after vaccination has the exact timings. Until then, the sunny spot on the balcony or terrace is its walk.

Coats and sweaters: who needs one

The honest answer is that most puppies do not. A sweater is for a short-coated or very small puppy on the cold end of the night — and the test is simple. If the puppy is shivering, curled into a tight ball with its nose tucked under its tail, or trying to climb into your lap more than usual, it is cold. If it is sprawled out and relaxed, it is not.

Breed type	Winter need
Toy and short-coated (Pug, Dachshund, Beagle, Toy Pomeranian, Chihuahua-type)	A light sweater at night below about fifteen degrees, off during the day
Medium coat (Labrador, Golden Retriever, Beagle adult, Cocker Spaniel)	Bedding off the floor is enough
Thick double coat (Spitz, Pomeranian, Husky, Samoyed, German Shepherd)	Nothing. Do not put a sweater on them indoors

If you do use a sweater, take it off indoors during the day and check under it every evening. A sweater that stays on for days flattens the coat, traps dirt, and hides a skin problem until it is bad.

Skin and coat in dry air

Kolkata’s winter air is dry, and the two changes that follow are dandruff and itching. Most of it is not a disease — it is a coat drying out. Brush daily, which spreads the skin’s natural oil through the coat, and bathe less often, not more. If the puppy is scratching hard enough to leave marks, or you find bald patches, that is a vet visit, not a shampoo change. Our post on a dog that keeps itching covers what the vet will look for.

Ticks drop in number in winter but do not disappear, and the diseases they carry are serious. Keep checking the ears, armpits and between the toes after every outing.

What does not change

• The vaccination card. Every date on it stands. Cold weather is not a reason to delay a dose, and the diseases the course protects against are in the city all year.
• Deworming. Same schedule as the rest of the year.
• Visits to the vet. A puppy that coughs, sneezes repeatedly, has runny eyes or goes off its food for more than one meal needs to be seen. Winter is when we hear “it is just a cold” most often, and it is usually not just a cold.

A note on the breeds that love this season

If you have been thinking about a coated breed and worrying about Kolkata’s climate, winter is the season that argues for it. A Spitz, Pomeranian or Samoyed puppy that arrives in November gets four comfortable months to grow into its coat before the heat comes, and a Husky is never happier here than it is in January. Our breed pages set out the summer routine each coat needs, so you can see the whole year before deciding — start with the Indian Spitz, which handles both ends of the year better than anything else we sell.