These are the things that actually matter in the first four weeks with an Akita, week by week. I'm a dog trainer and owner of The Toe Beans Co. Every week I help new puppy owners get through the first weeks of puppyhood. Here are the most important things I teach over the first 4 weeks.
Akitas were bred in Japan to guard and to hunt large game. That is what makes them so loyal and so calm with their own people. It is also why, when it comes to how to train an Akita puppy, the most important job in these four weeks is not toilet training or sleep. It is the world outside your front door, and the other dogs in it. An Akita who misses that work does not grow out of it.
Your puppy comes home at 8 weeks. The socialisation window closes at 24 weeks. The first fortnight goes on settling in, sleeping and toilet training, because a puppy who has just left their mum is in no state to be taken anywhere. That leaves roughly 14 usable weeks, and the clock started the day you collected, not the day you feel ready.
Most owners lose the first month to exhaustion and vet admin, start thinking about socialisation at four months, and find they have eight weeks left. These four weeks are the first four of fourteen.
Your Akita at a glance
- Adult weight
- 34 to 50kg
- Adult height
- 61 to 71cm at the shoulder
- Coat
- Thick double coat
- Shedding
- All year, plus a full coat blow twice a year
- Second vaccination
- Commonly around 12 weeks. Your vet sets the date
- Hardest thing
- Other dogs, especially the same sex
- Easiest thing
- Loyalty. They attach to their own people
- Watch for
- Taking charge at the front door, chasing small animals
You will see Akita, Akita Inu, Japanese Akita and American Akita. Some kennel clubs now treat the Japanese and American types as two separate breeds, and the American type is usually bigger and heavier. For the first four weeks the work is the same. Plan for a dog near the top of that weight range.
Settling in
Your puppy is 8 to 9 weeks old
Your puppy has just left their mum, their litter-mates and the only room they have ever slept in. This week is not about teaching them anything clever. It is about showing them that this new place is calm and predictable.
Akita puppy training starts at the front door
Decide how visitors come into your house before the first one arrives. A guardian breed who learns in week one that they run the front door is very hard to unpick later.
An Akita is not a greeter. They watch, they decide, and they remember. The front door is where a guardian breed works out what their job is, and they start working it out the first time someone knocks.
At 9kg that looks sweet. At 45kg it is a dog standing between you and your visitors, and you cannot lift them out of the way.
- You go to the door, not the puppy. Every time, from day one.
- Visitors ignore the puppy on arrival. No touching, no eye contact, no talking, until the puppy has settled.
- Keep arrivals boring. No party, no passing the puppy around.
- Let your puppy watch new people from a distance they choose. Reserved is fine. Pushed is not.
Letting the puppy rush the door because it is cute and nobody gets hurt. Every greeting they run at 9kg is practice for running it at 45kg.
Want the week by week goals for your Akita?Free guide. The four weekly goals, three checklists and the 2am page.
Get the free guideYour first night
Expect crying on night one and possibly nights two and three. Wait for a pause before you go to them, even half a minute, and keep it dull when you do.
Pick one approach and stick with it. Either the crate in your bedroom, moved a little closer to the door over the following nights, or one adult on the sofa nearby for a night or two. Not in your bed.
If you do go in: lights on, straight outside, straight back to bed. No play, no cuddles, no conversation.
A puppy this age cannot hold their bladder much past ninety minutes, so set an alarm rather than waiting to be woken.
Going in to check, leaving, then going back again when the crying restarts. That back and forth teaches a puppy that if they keep going long enough, someone always comes. Crying often gets louder right before a puppy settles for the first time.
Toilet training
Almost every toilet training problem is a supervision problem, not a stubborn dog. The job is to prevent the accident, not to react to it.
- Out first thing on waking, straight after every meal, straight after play, and every 45 to 60 minutes on top of that.
- Carry them to the spot while you still can.
- One word, said only once you are standing at the spot, never in the house.
- Give it 90 seconds. Nothing? Back inside, wait two minutes, try again rather than standing in the cold.
- Reward within a second or two of them finishing, with something you keep only for this.
Mark out one small patch rather than the whole garden, and do not scrub it spotless. It should smell like a toilet. That is the point.
The Akita crate: buy for the 50kg dog
Buy the crate for the adult, not the puppy, and put it in its final spot on the first night. Measure your internal doorways before you buy.
A crate is a bedroom, not somewhere they get sent. It works because a puppy will not usually soil where they sleep, and because a dog with somewhere that is theirs finds it easier to switch off.
Start with the door open and let them wander in and out. Feed them in there. Build up short stretches with the door closed, and keep every release a non-event: wait for calm, then open it, no fuss.
A crate big enough for a grown Akita is too big for a puppy, because they will sleep at one end and toilet at the other. Use a divider and move it back as they grow. And pick the spot carefully. A crate that size does not get moved around the house on a whim, and it does not fit through every door in a Sydney terrace.
The door gets opened while they are crying, which teaches them that crying opens doors. Or the crate becomes where they go when they have done something wrong, which spoils it for life.
The carry phase
Your puppy is 9 to 10 weeks old
What your Akita can do before the second vaccination
Before the second vaccination your puppy goes out carried, stays on concrete, and keeps away from shared water bowls. That still leaves most of the socialisation work wide open.
Your vet is answering a disease question and they are right about it. But nobody in that conversation is answering the behaviour question, and the two are on different clocks. The vaccination course is medical. The window is developmental, and it closes at 24 weeks whether the course is finished or not.
Wait for the all clear before you start and you hand back a third of your window. With most breeds that is a shame. With an Akita it is the most expensive mistake on this page.
- Carrying them down a busy shopping strip. Traffic, prams, sirens, strangers talking over their head, none of it touching the ground
- Short car trips that end somewhere pleasant, not only at the vet
- Handling at home. Ears, paws, mouth, tail, collar, every day
- Household sounds. The vacuum, the doorbell, thunder played low
- Visitors through your front door, done the week one way
- One known, calm, vaccinated adult dog
- Walking into the vet, getting a treat from reception, walking back out
- Ground level anything in dog parks and busy footpaths
- Open contact with dogs you do not know
- Shared water bowls
- Open grass and off lead areas, until one to two weeks after the third vaccination
The shopping strip is the one people skip because it feels like it does not count. It is the highest value thing on that list. Ten minutes of being carried through noise, movement and strangers, while nothing happens to them, banks more than a week of back garden time.
Do it now. An Akita puppy gets heavy fast, and the weeks where you can carry them through a crowd are short.
Get the carry-phase checklist for your AkitaPart of the free first four weeks guide.
Get the free guideReserved is fine. Worried is not.
Your Akita does not need to love strangers. They need to be calm around them. Aim for a dog who watches new people without worry, not one who runs up to say hello.
Akitas are reserved with people they do not know and devoted to their own. That is the breed working as designed. It is not something to train out.
The job is to make sure reserved never tips into worried, because a worried 45kg guardian breed is a very different dog to live with.
- Let strangers ignore your puppy rather than crowd them. Forced greetings build the wrong feeling in this breed.
- Reward calm watching, so that looking at a new person becomes the normal response.
- Never hold your puppy towards a person they are leaning away from.
Akita grooming: make the brush normal now
Your Akita will need daily brushing twice a year for life. The handling that makes that possible is built this week, while they are small enough to hold.
That thick double coat sheds all year, then blows out completely twice a year. During a blow you will be brushing every day for weeks.
- Short daily sessions. Paws, ears, mouth, tail, belly. Always stop before they have had enough.
- Introduce the brush as an object first, before you ever brush properly with it.
- Brush a little every day, even when there is nothing to brush out, so it never becomes an event.
A 45kg dog who has decided they do not like being brushed is not a dog you brush. You have about four months to make it normal.
Puppy biting
Puppies bite. It is how they learn to control their mouths, and they learned it from their litter-mates before you met them. What changes is your response, and it changes as they grow.
At 8 to 10 weeks, redirect and nothing else. The moment teeth touch skin, a toy appears. Never put your hand in their mouth to correct it.
Do not make a noise when it hurts. A yelp sounds like the game getting better.
An overtired puppy bites far more. If it suddenly spikes, look at their sleep before you look at their training.
Reading your puppy
Your puppy is 10 to 11 weeks old
Akita puppy socialisation: how to tell a good exposure from a bad one
A good exposure is one where your puppy can look at the thing, look away on their own, and move further from it if they want to. If they are being held towards something they are backing away from, that is not socialisation.
A puppy dragged past fifty new things while stressed has not banked fifty good experiences. They have banked fifty pieces of evidence that the world is too much.
Your own face is the biggest thing you bring to any of it, because they will check it before deciding what to think. Calm and slightly bored is the target. Not enthusiastic, not reassuring.
- Walk past the new thing rather than stopping and making an event of it.
- If you do stop near something, squat down with your back to it. Turning away says there is no danger here more clearly than any word you could use.
- While they work it out, do not touch them, do not talk to them and do not look at them. Calm disinterest from you is the message.
- Affection comes back once the thing has gone and they have settled.
The skill you are building is not a list of things they have met. It is recovery: noticing something new, having a small reaction, and coming back to calm without you.
Are Akitas good with other dogs?
Often not, and especially not with dogs of the same sex. That is exactly why every dog your puppy meets before 24 weeks matters more with an Akita than with almost any other breed.
Many Akitas end up happiest as the only dog in the house. Good socialisation does not change the breed. What it changes is whether your adult dog can walk past another dog calmly, share a street, and cope at the vet. That is the goal.
One calm, known, vaccinated adult dog who politely ignores your puppy, met over and over, does more than a park full of strangers.
- Pick calm dogs over playful ones. You want your puppy to learn that other dogs are boring, not a game.
- Match on size and manners, not age.
- End a meeting while it is still going well.
A pushy dog crashing into your puppy reads as harmless play to everyone watching. For a breed already inclined to be cautious with other dogs, it can be the moment that decides how they feel about them for the next decade. Step in early.
Can an Akita live with a cat?
Sometimes, with a careful introduction from day one. Akitas were bred to hunt, and that prey drive does not leave.
If you have a cat, rabbits or chickens, the introduction starts the day your puppy comes home, not the day there is a problem.
- Puppy on a lead or behind a gate for every early meeting.
- The cat always has a way out and somewhere high to go.
- Reward your puppy for looking away from the cat, not just for staying still.
- Never leave them alone together while your puppy is young.
Treat it as something you manage for the life of the dog, not something you solve once.
The ground opens up
Your puppy is 11 to 12 weeks old
When can an Akita puppy walk on the ground?
After the second vaccination, commonly around 12 weeks, a clean indoor venue and known healthy vaccinated dogs open up. Parks, open grass and shared bowls wait until one to two weeks after the third.
Akita puppy school: why it matters most for this breed
From the second vaccination, or with proof it is imminent. For most breeds puppy school is a good idea. For an Akita it is the most important thing you will do in their first six months, because it is the safest place to meet other puppies while the window is still open.
This is why our group puppy school runs inside a doggy daycare venue that is cleaned properly rather than in a public park. Puppies can start working with other puppies before they are fully vaccinated, which is the whole point of doing it that way.
What your Akita needs from a class is calm, well matched company. Not a free for all. If a class lets pushy puppies charge around unchecked, it is the wrong class for this breed.
If your vet gives you a different date, take their date. Ask them one specific question rather than a general one: what can we do with the puppy before the course is finished, and what about ground contact.
Akita puppy exercise
Once they are walking on the ground, five minutes of on-lead walking per month of age, twice a day. At three months that is about 15 minutes a walk, and it is a ceiling rather than a target.
Their joints are still forming, and a large breed takes longer to finish growing. Favour grass over concrete once they are allowed on it, and rough play with other dogs counts towards the total.
Watch them. A puppy who sits down, lies down or stops pushing forward on a walk is telling you something. Do not push through it.
Then do the other half. Short bursts of calm practice, time to sniff and simple problems to work out tire a brain in a way distance never does. A physically tired dog can still be wound up and unable to switch off.
How big do Akitas get?
Adult Akitas weigh 34 to 50kg and stand 61 to 71cm at the shoulder. Males are bigger than females.
That is a dog most people cannot physically hold back once they are grown. So everything has to be taught rather than muscled.
Everything your puppy practises at 10kg arrives again at 45kg. Jumping up. Pulling. Barging the door. None of it is cute the second time. Train for the adult you are going to have, starting now.
Where you should be by 12 weeks
- Staying calm while visitors come in, with you handling the door
- Sleeping through most of the night, with one toilet trip
- Going into the crate willingly
- Accepting handling on paws, ears, mouth and the brush
- Carried out into noise and crowds several times a week
- Met one calm known adult dog more than once, calmly
- Watching new people without worry
- Toileting outside most of the time, with accidents still normal
If most of those are in place, you are where you should be.
When it does not go to plan
Everything above is what to do. It is not what to do when your puppy does something it does not cover, and by about day four most people have hit one of those.
They growl when a visitor reaches for them. They will not settle in the crate after a fortnight. They stiffen at every dog on the street. The plan is right and your dog has not read it.
That is normal, and it is the point where a page stops being any use, because the answer depends on your dog rather than on the breed. It is also the reason we start with a home consultation rather than a classroom.
The first four weeks with your Akita
Complete the form to get your 4 week Akita guide. It shows what good looks like at every step from 8 to 12 weeks, so you always know whether you are on track.
- A goal for each of the four weeks, built around socialisation, the thing this breed needs most
- The three printable checklists: before day one, daily handling, and carry-phase exposure
- The alone time and toilet trackers to fill in each week
- The 2am page: what is normal at this age, and what needs attention
Free. Your guide opens as soon as you submit the form.
Quick answers
How big do Akitas get?
Adult Akitas weigh 34 to 50kg. Males stand about 66 to 71cm at the shoulder and females about 61 to 66cm. The American type is usually the bigger of the two.
Are Akitas good with other dogs?
Often not, especially with dogs of the same sex. Many Akitas are happiest as the only dog in the house. Good socialisation before 24 weeks makes a real difference, but it does not rewrite the breed.
Are Akitas good with kids?
They are devoted to their own family. They are also large, strong and do not love being mauled, so every moment between a young child and an Akita needs an adult watching.
Do Akitas shed a lot?
Yes. The thick double coat sheds all year and blows out completely twice a year. During a blow you will be brushing every day.
Are Akitas hard to train?
They are clever but independent. The problem is rarely whether they understand you. It is whether they think it is worth doing. Short sessions, no nagging, and no heavy handed correction.
Can an Akita live with a cat?
Sometimes, with a careful introduction from the day your puppy comes home. Akitas have real prey drive from their hunting history, so treat it as something you manage for life, not something you fix once.
How long do Akitas live?
Usually 10 to 13 years.
Can I take my Akita puppy out before the second vaccination?
Yes, carried. Before the second vaccination they go out in your arms, stay on concrete rather than grass, and keep away from shared water bowls. For an Akita this matters more than for most breeds, because the socialisation window is the most important part of raising one.
You helped me understand how her breed works, how much energy she's burning, how much she can handle in a session. I didn't know any of that. Otherwise I'd just be Google searching and getting nowhere.
Sabina / German Shorthaired Pointer owner, Sydney
Luke Buchanan, The Toe Beans Co
Force free dog training across Sydney. No pain, no fear, no force, no aggression.
