Day 0 - My plan

Order in the chaos

The plant rack will not be ready in time, unfortunately. The staining will be done, but the final sanding and assembly has to be done at a later date. The room is starting to become tidier– the floor is visible again.
I made a pre-Amaterasu to-do list, and there is more on there than I would like; nothing earth-shattering, just some housekeeping.
I installed the IP-camera so I can monitor Tera in her 'Amano Iwato' anywhere in the house– even though I don't think she'll be using that crate to sleep in for a few days.
Speaking of sleep, I hope that I will be able to get a good night's sleep, without fear that I will sleep through my alarm.

The big day

Tomorrow morning, my alarm goes off at 5:00, and at 5:30 a friend will come pick me up to go to the breeder. Traffic allowing, we will arrive around 8:00. I expect to be back home around noon.
The reason that I asked my friend to come with me that day as the driver is a simple one; I do not want to put Tera in the crate on the way home. Since the whole experience will be traumatic for her no matter what I do, adding to that being alone in a crate in a loud thing (car) for around two hours could severely set my crate training back.
Depending on the circumstance, I will either keep her in the footwell at my legs, where she is safe and reasonably confined, or I will keep her on my lap– whatever seems more logical at the moment.

One thing I still need to work out is if I want to interrupt her if she starts to cry and howl in the car. When she is quiet, I will give her stratches behind the ears for being such a good little lady. It feels a bit mean to interrupt her when she is starting to whine at this point. I'll see if I can think of things to distract her instead.
Due to the length of the drive, she will get two to three toilet opportunities, unless she falls asleep in the car, which would be the best thing that could happen.

Home

Once home, I will see what I will do first; give her another toilet opportunity at the spot we will be standing at a lot the coming days (and nights), or in case she just had her toilet opportunity, I will take her inside and immediately start crate training. If she did not sleep in the car, she is likely to be very tired, so getting her to fall asleep in her crate is paramount. Until I am completely sure that she is crate trained, her crate will be the only place she will sleep. Letting her sleep on my lap would be a dream, but crate training is more important by a large margin. She can sleep on my lap once she is fully grown.
If she did sleep in the car, I will still start the crate training, but will also play with her a bit. If she gets too excited, we will play outside in the back garden. Inside, you are calm.
There are more manners and house rules that I will start to enforce on day one, moment one; from the moment I enter the house at the breeder. These will be discussed in another post.
Outside of play, she is allowed some structured free time.

Structured free time

Something that Will Atherton teaches in his Perfect Puppy Course (no, I am not paid by Will to talk about his courses, I promise!) to his pup, is what he calls 'structured free time'. This is not a difficult concept– when the dog is not crated and I am not training or playing with her, I keep a close eye on her at all times. In case I can't monitor her directly, she goes in the crate.
If I allow her to check out my living room, I will watch her like a hawk and guide her through the house rules. I will not leave her unattended for a second. This minimises the chance of toilet accidents, her making the wrong choices and chewing on things that are either dangerous, or destructive. That would be unstructured free time– just letting her do what she wants without active monitoring and guidance by me.
In the case where I have to interrupt her bad choices too much, I will go to option 2.

The place bed

In Will's training, the place bed is, like the crate, a place of calmness, relaxation and another method of structured free time. The place bed allows the pup to be close to me– I will sit on a chair besides her, for example, but she won't be allowed to leave the place bed. When she does try, I will let her know verbally that she made a wrong choice, pick her up and put her back on the bed. If she has been a good little lady for a while, she gets praise.
The idea here is that she will settle down on the place bed and calmly entertain herself with a chew toy, or just taking things in. This teaches her not only to be calm and relaxed, it also teaches impulse control.
This is place training without using the command; I will pick her up and put her on the place bed, and either pick her up to take her off, or I will lure her off with a treat, conditioning the 'free' command.

Obedience

What I will do on day one for obedience really depends on Tera; if crate training is going well, and she seems pretty relaxed, I will start charging her marker. This simply means that I will teach her that when she hears a certain sound, something good happens in the form of a treat or a scratch. I start with a clicker, and in a few months time, I will combine that with a 'yes'. My commands will all be in Dutch to start out with, maybe some Japanese.
If all goes well, I might look into teaching her her name. To her this just means that she should look at me. To her, 'Tera' or 'Amaterasu' should mean: "Look at me, because I am going to give you instructions". I would also like to start with a food lure, so I can begin teaching a sit. If she is too stressed to care about food, or any obedience in general, I will postpone that until a later date. Obedience is not important to me right now. The most important things are manners, crate training and toilet training.

Every hour, on the hour

I have given myself the challenge of not letting Tera have a single toilet accident in the house. I will try to accomplish this by letting her out every hour on the hour, unless she is sleeping. If I notice that one hour is too long for her, I will adjust as needed. At night, I won't do it every hour, I will wait as long as I can, without forcing her to have an accident in the crate. If I think she needs to go, I will pick her up, give her five to ten minutes to do her thing, then put her back in the crate. No excitement, no messing around.
There are some other 'rules' for this challenge:
She wakes up from a nap? Toilet opportunity.
We are done playing? Toilet opportunity.
Did she just have a drink or a meal? Toilet opportunity.

Sit, Stay, Break

Another thing that we will be working on from day one, is impulse control. A great way to start doing this is during meal times. She is only allowed access to her food when I allow her to. Even if the bowl is on the floor, she has to look at me and wait for me to give the okay. She obviously doesn't understand this principle, since she always had to charge at the food when presented, due to the competition from her siblings.
I will have to block her from getting to her food. This will confuse her at first, but I will not allow her to eat until she looks at me for a fraction of a second.
Eventually, I want her to be able to sit and wait for minutes before getting to eat.

Why?

This is a great way to teach her a lot of important life lessons:
- You get your food from me. It is mine, and I share it with you.
- You will be calm before you eat.
- Everything good in life comes when you sit patiently and look at me for guidance and direction.
- Even if you really want something, you still have to wait patiently until I say you are allowed to. This impulse control will work wonders in a lot of situations.
Besides all of the above, she will see me as her loving leader and build respect.

I hope to let you all know tomorrow how much of this planning actually came to fruition.
How did your planning go– was it as structured as mine, or did you wing it?