Are you ready for a dog?

What you see when you imagine your new best friend…Snuggling by a fireplace, leisurely walks around the block, opening Christmas gifts with the family with the dog laying peacefully by your side, car rides with your new pal watching out the window.

I’m a trainer…and a breeder…when you take off the rose colored blinders…I mean glasses what you really have is…your dog chewed off the screen to the fireplace, for the THIRD TIME!  That leisurely walk, well you hate going on any walk because you’re fairly certain you’re on Youtube because of the pulling, lunging beast you call your “puppy”.  Christmas?  There will be no Christmas!!  Your dog ripped up the gifts that Santa left and then peed in the paper!  And car rides, don’t get me started…

Raising a puppy is hard work.  It takes MANY hours of training and lots of consistency to have the image you saw with your rose colored glasses.  Are you ready for that kind of hard work?  Because if you aren’t, your house will be in ruins, your children will dislike the dog, your husband/wife will want to divorce you and all of those friends that used to come over…well they are busy now.  So make sure you are 100% ready for the work, commitment, and consistency it takes to raise a new puppy into a dog you’ll love!  There will ALWAYS be more puppies waiting for when you’re ready!

Being ready for a puppy is more than just making that decision and Googling to find your new best friend tomorrow.  Below are some things you should think about to see if you are ready for a new puppy.

1. Is your house, condo, apartment, etc ready for a puppy?  Have you talked to your landlord or if you own, do you know how you’ll contain the puppy once he/she are home?
2. Do you have the time, flexibility or money to make sure a puppy can be taken to potty during a typical work day?  A puppy can hold their bladder for their age in months plus one.  Meaning a 3 month old puppy can hold its bladder for approximately 4 hours, on a good day.  Can you be home or make and afford arrangements to have the puppy let out during a work day?
3. Kids and puppies can be wonderful together or a diabolical disaster.  Puppies are like piranhas for the first few months.  Do you have a plan in place to make sure your kids are safe from razor teeth and aren’t encouraging biting and nipping?
4. Do you have a plan in place to make sure the puppy can be safe from your kids?  Rambunctious and excited kids have been know to inadvertently scare puppies resulting in a defensive puppy.  Can you be there to supervise 100% of the time?
5. Have you ever crated trained a puppy?  Are you prepared to wake in the middle of the night to take the puppy out?  Can you tolerate the noise of a puppy working on crate training?
6. Do you have the time available to socialize the puppy?  Take the puppy to stores, walks, friends houses, to meet other people, other sites.  Not just once, but multiple times a week for the first year?  There’s a crucial window to socialize you want to make sure you don’t miss it.
7. Are you financially prepared?  Puppies aren’t cheap.  From the crate, to cleaning solutions, to chew toys, to food and training classes.  Add in vet bills and those things they accidentally chewed when you fell asleep with the puppy out, and you’re well over 1K in stuff!
8. Are you prepared to be tied down?  To supervise a puppy 100% of the time or have them crated.  To be with them to help them learn how to be a good dog?  This isn’t a 2 week thing, this is a 1 year thing.

Are you thinking twice about a puppy?  That’s good!  Because while I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE puppies, I also see puppies cause enormous amounts of frustration in people’s lives.  Is there a solution?  YES!  Not everyone wants to raise a puppy.  If you are willing to consider a young adult many breeders will place 6 month, 1 year, or 2 year old dogs because they didn’t turn out “just” the way they expected.  Sometimes they have a snaggle tooth, sometimes they didn’t get as tall as the standard called for.  Or sometimes they kept two and after growing them out they decided to keep the one they felt more closely fit the standard.

In all of those cases, you get a dog that has lots of training, socialization and vet work done for you.  You get a dog that has had a wonderful start and you didn’t have to do ALL of the work!  Really it’s a BIG WIN for many people!

How do you find adult dogs?  Email a few breeders and usually one of them knows someone that “might” have one now or soon!