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What a puppy learns about night during its first three nights becomes its reference point. These six decisions are hard to undo later, and none of them calls for any particular equipment.
1. Sleep close to it on the first night, not away from it
This is the decision everybody gets the wrong way round, out of fear of creating a habit. A puppy that has just left its littermates is living through its first night of complete solitude: leaving it alone does not teach independence, it teaches that night is a time of distress.
The crate or the bed beside your own on the first night, then moved a few dozen centimetres further away each night, produces a dog that sleeps alone within a week. The opposite often produces months of trouble.
2. Settle straight away on where it will sleep in the end
The gradual move has to lead somewhere. Choosing the final spot on the very first day — rather than discovering it three weeks in — saves doing the work twice.
The final spot comes down to three criteria: quiet, steady in temperature, and in a room the household passes through. A utility room meets the first two and fails the third.
3. Don't answer every whimper, don't ignore it either
Answering every cry teaches that crying works. Ignoring it entirely leaves an animal in distress. The workable path lies between the two: a calm presence, no play, no trip outside, no excited talk.
A puppy reassured by that presence goes back to sleep. A puppy still crying after several minutes of calm presence probably needs to go out.
4. Expect a night waking before four months
A two-month-old puppy cannot last the night, and it is not a question of training: bladder control develops with age. Reckon on roughly one hour per month of age, plus one.
Planning that trip outside rather than being caught out by it changes everything: a planned trip is brief, no light and no play, and the puppy settles back down. An improvised trip at 4am wakes the whole house.
5. A contained space, not a large room
A puppy that soils its bed almost always has too much room: it can go in one corner and sleep in the other. A space where it can lie down and turn around, and no more, works with its instinct not to foul where it sleeps.
The space grows as it grows. Starting large and then cutting back does not work, because it will already have learnt the opposite.
6. Bring a smell from where it came from
A cloth carrying the smell of its mother or its littermates, asked for from the breeder or the shelter, does more for the first nights than any accessory.
It costs nothing, it is asked for at the moment of adoption, and almost nobody thinks of it because the question only ever comes up once.