This is a 'what breed?' (if any) question.
We are a family of four, two dd's 15 & 13. Both girls want to get a dog. Dh comes from a family who had dogs all his childhood so knows all about how much is involved. We had a disastrous experience with a rescue dog a couple of years ago. Had him two years - he was enormous and completely untrainable and we very sadly had give him back to dogs trust after he attacked dd2 with no warning whatsoever after we'd spent a lot of time and money on behavioural issues. This is my only experience of living with a dog so if we're going to try again I want to do it right.
Any dog we might consider would have to be small enough not to have the strength to pull a skinny teenaged girl over on a lead as they want to be able to walk him. They couldn't do this with the last dog as he had the strength of a black bear and they were even smaller/skinnier back then, so I'm thinking the largest size would be collie. But not a collie as they need soooooo much stimulation. None of us could tolerate a yappy tiny thing (do all small dogs yap?) None of us have a problem with cross breeds, heinz 57s - we're not looking for a designer dog by any stretch of the imagination. The rescue we had was, by guesswork, great dane/lab/GS. He was youngish when we got him and grew more than we expected, his head was up to my hip, I'm 5'6.
The girls have issues. One is a tearaway teen who is beginning to settle down, she doesn't go to school so is home on weekdays but sleeps until lunchtime given half a chance. She gets lots of chances as I work until lunchtime, four hours a day, 5 days a week currently. This could, theoretically become more at any time in the next few years.
The younger girl is also not currently in school daily because of extreme anxiety issues. She is doing a programme at the moment when she goes into school when able, on a reduced timetable. The maximum at the moment is two mornings and one 5hr day but there are many entire weeks when she doesn't make it in at all. She is the one pushing the issue of a dog. I think it would do her a lot of good to have the responsibility of walks, letting it out etc but hopefully will be back in school full time if we work hard on the anxiety (panic attacks) but this could take anything up to a year, if at all.
Summing up the problems we had with the rescue dog they were that he had eating issues - he'd been stray so had eaten crap for the duration until we got him so he had both stomach problems involving huge cost in expensive foods and extreme possessiveness over food. He was huge and strong so we had to use harnesses to walk him and even then I could end a walk hardly able to drive as my wrists were so battered and he could steal food/chewable lovely things I loved from just about any surface we owned despite my vigilance in putting things out of the way.
An ideal breed for us would be a whippet. My in laws have whippets and they're great but they've had health issue after health issue and have had £thousands spent on vet bills - mostly insurance but my in laws would spend their last penny on the dogs and their insurance bills have sky rocketed.
Or maybe we're not a suitable family for a dog? I want to be realistic and I don't want to be unfair to any dog that might come our way.
Any wise words to be had? Sorry this is so long 