How do you deal with the massive lifestyle change to your dog when kids come along?
We have a 3.5 year old cockerpoo. He's seriously high energy and could walk for hours and hours and do endless brain training. We now have two children under 2yrs old.
We went through a stage of thinking he would have to go when he hit doggy puberty as he became a right little shit tbh. He kept randomly attacking DP, biting him. He was also super possessive of EVERYTHING. Literally you could drop a pen and he would leap on it and defend it. Thankfully we worked hard and he's now a different dog that my eldest could literally take food from (if we didn't run interference to keep them safe)
But how do I keep the dog happy? As you can imagine having two such young children - 20 months and just 4 months old, my life is pretty manic and I'm not getting much sleep. Consequently the poor dog is not getting the mental or physical stimulation he would love.
We have a dog walker three times a week and also use borrow my doggy people when they're free, but I just feel like I'm outsourcing dog ownership and he literally just lives here, like a fluffy housemate i occasionally say 'sup' to.
Do you think it's ok for him to live like this? I'm hoping it's just short term and as the babies get older I'll have more time and also he'll be older so will need less??? Or do you think it's cruel and he's bored and should go elsewhere to a more active family. My best friend (a gay man, which is relevant as his lifestyle is not going to change as he doesn't want kids) has his this weekend and he looks so happy in all the photos playing out
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The doghouse
Feel guilty re dog and kids
10 replies
legalseagull · 11/08/2019 15:21
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