Ok,so we have a puppy. He's 11 weeks old and we've had him 3 weeks. We thought long and hard for months about having one. We had a dog years ago but not as a pup. He essentially belongs to my daughter- she's his Mummy, cleans up after him,feeds him etc- unless she's not in and we do it. But she's 17, not a young child, and knows the responsibility that comes with him.
It's like having another baby in the house. She's up in the night with him, sometimes 2 or 3 times, for the toilet then he just wants to play,no matter if he should be going back to sleep. He's almost house trained, but when we first had him he was weeing and pooing everywhere. They need a lot of stimulation to stop them from getting bored,and he chews everything, probably because he's teething. And he bites. He nips,and grabs. He's had our fingers,toes,legs......just now he's nipped me on the back which bloody hurt. And that's what they do when they're playing because that's what he did with his siblings.
One of us takes him in the garden for a wee at least once every 40 minutes no matter what the weather otherwise he does it indoors. We have to keep a lot of things away from him, especially soft stuff like clothes,slippers etc. He needs constant supervision and we can't leave him on his own yet because he's too young so its a bit of a tie.We can't walk him yet because he hasn't had all his jabs.The training is constant- he's learning the toilet training, bless him, but we feel like we say no a lot to him. Teaching him to sit,stay, not to beg, to go in his bed, to walk on the lead to get him used to it, to drop things he shouldn't have...
I work from home as a childminder so that's why we got a puppy so that he grows with my job,however he does try and nip the children or grab their clothes although luckily their parents amazing and are used to dogs so completely understand that its a phase. However, my daughter is around most days and my husband doesn't work so they're there to work with him because there's no way I could do it and work!
However.....he's adorable! He's funny,and clumsy,and gorgeous and a fantastic addition to our family and we don't regret having him for one minute. It'll be a lot better when we can walk him and he's done wonders for my daughter's mental health which us one of the main reasons we got him.
Do your research. Rescue centres are closed at the moment- we looked at so many,but none had puppies and their waiting lists were huge. We spent hours looking and got our boy from a guy advertising on Pets4homes. He lived 2.5 hours away from us and because of restrictions we couldn't go and see them before we paid a deposit ( he's a Staffy so so cost £700 altogether).However he sent loads of pics,videos,messaged us when he'd had his jabs etc told us where he lived...there are a lot of scammers especially for pedigree dogs but we took a leap of faith and went with my gut feeling and paid a deposit of £200 and thankfully it all turned out ok. You pay the deposit to Pets4homes and the seller doesn't get it until they hand the dog over.We were told that Gumtree etc are dodgy for pets so we didn't bother with them.
Hope all this helps! Puppies are a lot of work but worth it in the end when they eventually grow out of their stupid stage!