How many dogs is too many?
We have good friends who have 9. Yes nine dogs. They live on a rural property so there's no by-laws limiting the number of pets. But the house is small and all the dogs are in the house for the most part. There is a designated dog room, but for the majority of the time they have free reign of the house.
And its a good thing, their house does not smell of dog, their furniture is not chewed up, their floors are spotless because no crumb of food ever stays for too long.
They even have 2 cats. I'm not talking little dogs either, each and every one is either a labrador or golden retriever.
It works for them, but could it work for us?
Yes, I fear that we may become a multi-dog household. Not 9 of them, but perhaps 2.
As mentioned in an earlier post, we've spoken for and put a deposit down on a puppy who will be coming home in about 6 weeks.
So that is good, but in the last week we've had 2 inquiries about taking other dogs that people are needing to get rid of.
One is a 6 month female black lab that someone was looking to use for a show dog, but the adult teeth didn't come in quite right and that is out for the dog by the owner.
Leery on this one, would love to have a pup that is out of the real puppy stage, but at the same time if it was bred for show, will it be good for retrieving? The price is right, free, but can't let my big sympathetic heart get the best of me on this one.
The other is a 18 month old that has been with a pro trainer since birth. Good bloodlines, good training history and so on make this a more attractive option.
The dog isn't quite living up to the standards and/or timeline that the pro had set out for her. She's a good dog, but with so many others to train you have to leave the weaker ones behind. Kind of like a sports team, you can only keep so many and the ones that don't make the grade have to find another place to play when they're cut.
The price for a dog like this is steep even with a less than stellar performance record. Our beloved mudpuppy came to our home under similar circumstances, a great dog, but didn't fit in with the plan/team she was on. But she was free under the condition that we get her spayed right away.
We'd already said that we could not afford the asking price as it was over 2000 bucks. But there was an email last night saying that there was some negotiating room on price and how did we feel about that??
Ahhhhrrrggghhh, I don't know…I'm not too sure about the puppy coming in 6 weeks, let alone having a more mature dog in the house.
It would be good in a lot of ways. There's advantages to having 2 dogs for sure. A more mature dog to show the other one good habits, 2 for hunting, 2 for training, one could rest while the other is running, hunting. More to love, more of everything, including dog hair!! Mostly, one could entertain the other and that would be helpful at the puppy stage.
It could be bad in lots of ways. With the older dogs, you have no idea what sort of issues you could be dealing with. There is double the cost in all areas, double the trouble basically.
We'll have to think long and hard about whether we would even consider having two dogs right now.
Have to think of Miss K, what is it going to do to her if we did decide to bring 2 into the house and then had to get rid of one because it wasn't working out?? Plus how might an older dog relate to her? Have they even been around kids or would that be a safety issue??
Adding to the thought process is the real possibility the breeder of the puppy we are getting may very well offer us an attractive deal on 2 puppies.
The mom had a litter of 12. Yes 12 damn puppies. I think he had about 6 spoken for before she had them, but now he's got double that number to get rid of…yikes
Well wouldn't that be a whole other kettle of fish? Or barrel of puppies if you will. We're not sure about having one puppy, how would we deal with 2??
Could be double the fun and definitely double the trouble.
For the long time we wondered if we'd ever get a replacement for our little girl who put such big paw prints on our hearts, and now we've got the little buggers knocking down our door.
In some ways I hope we just end up with one for the time being, but another part of me says fill the house up with any that want to come our way.
Like they say, when it rains…it generally pours..whatever happens I know I'm going to have to get more Swiffers for the floors!!
Til next time...
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