Any advice on getting a dog for family with young children

[wassername]

I'm really at the very beginning of wondering if we could give the time and commitment needed to own a dog. I know the kids would love to have one, but I don't know where to start investigating the subject. I don't know what breeds are best with young kids (3,6,and 9 at the moment) and as we live in London in a terraced house I wouldn't want a large breed or one that needs really long walks as we could really only do round the park on weekdays. Any advice would be welcome.

Our dachshund certainly doesn't need 2 hours every day. He can do a good long walk but he's just as happy being a lapdog. Very adaptable.

And he doesn't smell and is easy to keep clean. We got him from his breeder at 10 months - she'd kept him for show but he wasn't making the grade but he had by then developed a lovely character and was used to her grandchildren.

So how long did it take to train your puppy? and puppy to calm down?

Our pup was born on 24th Sept, we got her in mid December and the middle of January she was pretty much housetrained, give or take a couple of wee accidents.

She did not have to calm down really. If she got any calmer she would be in a coma.

Our basset hound (not quick on the uptake) is finally house trained. Hurray! He is seven months old. Hurroo. On the other hand, he learned how to sit for a treat in the time it took me to open the packet of treats.

My goldie is 14 weeks and asks to go out for a pee/poo most of the time. But today, I took him in the garden, took him to school and left him outside the gate with ds1 for about 10-15 mins there, brought him home, where he promptly did the wee he'd been 'saving' for the entire trip in the hall . But he sits for treats, sits to greet people, sits to get out of his crate etc. He has some party tricks like playing dead and doing a high 5 on command. He still chews my feet though, which is totally irritating/painful/shoe ruinous. He's not allowed in many rooms of our large house and has not done too much damage yet (fortunately - rented house with uptight owner who doesn't like dogs much. We have a whole chapter on the dog in the contract.) Our pup spends quite a lot of time crated when he's unsupervised - particularly since an unfortunate sock consumption incident!

I'm really looking forward to obligatory walks when he's bigger. Much more pleasant than a gym membership!