After years of my children nagging for a dog I've finally crumbled under the pressure! We go camping quite often in the holidays and most of our friends have dogs. I got away with it for a year or two saying they had "time share dogs" to get it out their system. It worked for a while but as time passed and they spent more time with their "time share dogs" the more they wanted their own!
So why the reluctance? I've never had a dog, only cats so they are my comfort zone. We have 3 cats, although to be fair we didn't set out to have 3! We bought a ginger Tom about 7 years ago. He managed to get a tortoise shell Manx pregnant. She decided that she was moving in and, despite our best efforts, were unable to find her family. We adopted her and the children enjoyed the experience of having 4 litters! We had to spay her after that as it was taking a toll on her. The last kitten was a little black and white Manx and we couldn't find a home for him so we decided to keep him! He has turned out to be the sweetest of the three!
As you can imagine the children aren't overly enthusiastic with helping with the cats and I figure dogs are more work! A puppy is as bad as a toddler with all the chewing and potty training! I finally agreed under the following conditions.
A- Labrador because they must be good at training as they use them for guide dogs and I like the look of them ;-p
B- A girl because I figure she'll be gentler and also our friends' dogs are boys so I figured less testosterone would be good! Although we're going to have to be snappy about spaying her!
C- I originally wanted one at least a year old to avoid the whole potty training nightmare. We struggled to find one on the adoption sites and, with each one that we missed out on, the children were becoming more frantic and the nag level went to defcon 1!
Looking through all the adverts I was being gradually seduced by all the cute puppies. I was given a lot of advise from friends about making sure you get a puppy from a registered breeder or they develop all sorts of hip and eye problems. After much debate my husband and I decided to bite the bullet and get a puppy from a Kennel Club registered breeder. It was quite an investment financially, certainly more than we had planned on spending but at the end of the day this is a long time investment and I guess you get what you pay for lol.
The other thing that swayed me towards a puppy was that I thought the cats would find her less intimidating than a bigger dog and might accept her easier. I guess this is a pipe dream though as they don't even like each other!
Tuesday evening we all piled into the car to go and meet our new baby. It was quite overwhelming with the whole litter bouncing around us but was definitely love at first sight! It was going to be a long wait till Saturday when we would be able to take her home!
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