Hi all, thank you for reading my story, sorry for making it so long. I would love to have a family dog, but our previous experience ended prematurely and very disappointingly. Do you think we could take in another dog and under which conditions?
About two and a half year ago we had our first puppy. We are a family of five, all three kids (<12y) are on the autistic spectrum and we know a family dog can do a lot of good for (autistic) kids. [EDIT: The previous sentence is more than a general remark, I have seen so often that it applies to our kids. The kids love animals, it is so great to see them being gentle and calm with other dogs, it has a calming effect on them and generally dogs approach them very easily. In general, the kids are good in following rules, but they can be quite vocal.] I absolutely love dogs, my husband can be close to them, but could also happily live without them. My husband is away from home for prolonged periods, so I would be the dog’s main caregiver. I grew up with dogs and have had close experience with Dalmatians before. We did a lot of research about dog breeds and raising dogs, I even did a course about dogs before we had the dog, visited several breeders and eventually we took home a male Dalmatian puppy. I thought it was going to be a tough job raising the dog, but I had prepared myself well and was ready to put in a lot of effort.
The breeder chose a pup for us because the pup knew for himself what he wanted, which is typically good around kids she said, but it turned out that was too much. The puppy had no will to please, was very driven to ‘work’, he had a very strong will of his own and I didn’t manage to positively influence his behaviour in the house (outside I managed him quite well in the end). The puppy school where we first went to basically sent us away after a few lessons and I think gave up on us even earlier, even though we were quite desperate for help. The only thing that they consistently taught us there is that there are awfully many biting incidents with young children; without further advice that’s just terrible information. We luckily found a different puppy school that was much more specialised at working breeds and we learned a lot. However, we were quite far behind and I had a very hard time to find a dog sitter for my two working days because he pulled the leash and it was a getting a strong dog. It basically ended in me getting fired for working too inconsistently in my new job and almost having a burn-out for trying to manage everything and still not succeeding. Then we took in an exchange student who was experienced with dogs who was going to watch over the dog during my working days of my new new job; it sounded like a perfect solution. However, this social change at about 10 months of age didn’t work out. Our dog started snapping at her, and at our kids at that point. I called the breeder that this was not going well and within a week she found a beautiful new place for him.
I learned a lot and I think I didn’t ruin the dog, who now lives a very good life in his new family. I sacrificed myself over giving him enough exercise and training and raising him, but in the end the dog did end up biting one of the kids on the very last day he lived with us and now I don’t know what to think.
I really don’t know if we just had a much too difficult dog, or that I completely underestimated having a dog. We have a decently sized garden, right next to a green area, in our current situation almost always someone is home (the kids don’t go to daycare but someone is over to look after them) and so many people have a dog that seem to (have) put in hardly half the energy that I did. My husband gave up on having a dog after our puppy, but I would love to adopt an adult dog that would be suitable as a family dog and he is okay with that if I consider it to be ‘my’ dog. What would you all think? I would really appreciate some advice and to have some idea about the amount of effort another dog than our Tornadolmation would cost.
Edit: of course we also had good times with him! He was very cuddly with me, and he really enjoyed tug of war with the kids, or going to the park with the whole family.
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