Advice Request: Building Up Time Alone?

[HappyRK]

Hi guys - we’ll be picking up our first Border Collie in the New Year (he’ll be 8 weeks old - a beautiful Blue Merle  ). We’re trying our best to prepare and plan as well as we can, and something we really want to get right is building up time he is alone in appropriate increments.  

A little about us - this will be our first puppy, but we have been preparing for this for about a year. We have done a LOT of breed research - often from this forum! - and feel that a BC is the right fit for us (we have done a lot of thinking about how to appropriately meet his exercise/mental stimulation needs) - but we do both work full time Mon-Fri.

Thankfully, we both work Flexi-time (so we can choose our own hours between 7-7 and therefore stagger our workdays - and I can take long lunches if I need to pop home), and I already work from home 2 days a week. My boyfriend is also likely going to start working at least 1 day from home in the New Year.   

So all being well, we’re looking at strategies for the remaining 1-2 days. The maximum time he would potentially be alone on these days (if we didn’t come home in the middle of the day) would be 6 hours.  

We wanted to hold off getting a puppy until we had our holiday entitlement for 2020. (We can either take this together or stagger it.)  

Another thing to mention is that my sister is self-employed and usually works between my parents’ house, my brother’s house, and ours. She has trained/socialised a puppy in the last few years and is very happy to help us out.  

So - the question - what is the best way to build up his time alone over his first months/year? How much time off work would you recommend we take in the beginning? And then how should we best build the time up? As I say I can come home during the day and take long lunches - but is this the best thing to do?  

We really want to get this right, and are willing to commit to a very incremental approach/our families are willing to help.  

All advice appreciated! Thank you for reading my wall of text