Good luck with Rocco.
He has a smashing name and a loving family.
Shadowboxer will, I'm sure, give you lots of words of wisdom on raising your baby.

Well, Rocco is in the air at the moment, I'm picking him and my dad up from the airport at 6:30pm our time (we're four hours ahead of the Uk here in Bermuda). Really looking forward to meeting him.

He seems to have come on leaps and bounds in the last few days. This morning before their flight, he was playing in the park with a Doberman puppy about the same age, this reinforces our thoughts that he is much more used to being with dogs than humans so I think he just needs to get used to us being around him.

Apparently we have some issues with carpet that we need to work out - yesterday he spent most of the day out of the house, pee'd and pood like was supposed to but as soon as he gets on to carpet he feel the need to pee again, even if he's just been outside. Luckily, we don't have any carpet in out house!!!

Think my Dad will be sad to give him over to us - apparently Rocco's a bit of a babe magnet!

I've been given the names of two trainers who are apparently very good (one of them worked with my friend's boxer) and I'm going to give them a call once he's settled in a little bit.

The only thing that I'm worried about now is that I had been planning to crate train him but now I feel like he's already been through a lot and I don't want to add to his stress anymore. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Hello Natalie congratulations on your new puppy . If he was twelve weeks old when you got him from the breeder it sounds as though he missed out on the early human socialisation period..twelve weeks is not the best time to get a puppy..I prefer a much younger age seven weeks is best . When you get him home I would try to give him some space to settle in, don't ask a lot of him and let him come to you in his own time..follow the suggestions above made by Shadowboxer and Archaeopath and others , If you want to use a crate I think that will be fine..perhaps partly cover it with a blanket to begin with so that he has somewhere safe to retreat to..I would pretend he is not toilet trained and start again from scratch ,good luck with him

Well it looks as thought we were worried about him for no reason. He was a bit quiet and generally a bit depressed when we first got him home, but now he's definately come out of his shell. He found his bark yesterday, which was fantastic to hear. He seems to have a problem with the mop and had lots of fun barking at it while I was clearing up one of his messes!

He was climbing into his bed as soon as anyone walked into the room but that seems to have stopped and he's a bit more confident.

On the whole he's brilliant. He's been in his crate for three nights now. Lots of noise for about 20mins on the first night, no noise but a little accident on the second night (probably our fault for not getting up early enough) and perfect today!

We introduced him to the children over the weekend as it was our weekend to have them, and he seems to really like little people! Played with them really well. I'm not sure who exhausted who, and he went for a swim! (Pictures in the my pictures forum)

He's gone to work with my OH today so we'll see how that goes.

We've got another trip to the vet tomorrow because he's developed a bit of a cough. The vet doesn't think it's anything but wants to keep an eye on it. He thinks he's a little bit 'riby' too and could do with putting a little bit of weight on. I might be wrong but I thought that boxers were quite slim until they're about a year old and then they start to fill out some more? He doesn't look under nourished to us. He weighs 19lbs and is very solid.

Thank you for all the advice - we really appreciate it!

It looks like he's going to be a fantastic dog!

he sounds as if he is doing well. 19lbs is not too bad for a 12 week old puppy. Finn was 22lbs at 14 weeks. Boxers can looks really ribby and can take until 2 or 3 to fill out properly.

Just off to look at the pics