There’s a lot of negativity on this thread. I realise some of it is justified, but I’m going to balance it out.
I was just like you. Large house and garden, live on the edge of countryside, used to borrow the neighbours’ dog for walks. I actually love dogs but never had space in our lives to commit to one.
Last autumn I realised time was ticking on. Kids getting older, so are we. If we didn’t take the plunge soon, kids would have left home when we got around to it. I wanted them to have a dog.
We brought home our cockapoo puppy at 10 weeks. He was super cute but I found the disruption hard. Great big crate blocking cupboards, huge pen in the kitchen. Smells..
It took me a long time to like the dog. I was back at work part time after three weeks. He’s now five months old and it’s still very hard. The hardest bit is the early morning waking. I hadn’t considered that. One of my children was a very early riser, and now she’s a teenager, my occasional lie ins are hard earned. The dog wakes up the minute he hears somebody move upstairs, so that can be 6am or even earlier if somebody needs the loo. He barks and whines, so you do have to get up.
On a positive side, he will sleep through the night from 11.30. He stays happily in a crate if we need to leave him in the day. We have a dog walker on the two days I work. He can be left for 3-4 hours if needed. We recently had to leave him for 5 hours because we went into the city for a Christmas meal, and he was absolutely fine.
He needs feeding at lunchtime, so you have to factor that in. We’ve got another month of that.
He hasn’t destroyed anything in the house. He tried to at first but we all decided on a noise we would make to warn him off. He sometimes brings a shoe but he doesn’t chew it. He has never nipped. He doesn’t lick much but he does jump up when he’s pleased to see you. That drives me mad!
He was housetrained within three weeks. He had one poo and three wees on the kitchen floor in all that time. We used to take him out every hour, now he can go much longer. We never slept downstairs with him. He cried for four nights but settled on the fifth night. We certainly didn’t toilet him during the night between midnight and 6am in the early days.
He has had only two accidents in his crate, once he was sick because we accidentally fed him twice. The second time he had an upset tummy.
He is trained to sit, lie down, give me your paw. He will walk to Heel on command. He comes back to a whistle. He will dig the lawn if you let him. We don’t let him.
We went to puppy school for six weeks, taught us a lot. He’s had attachment issues and wouldn’t let us leave the room, but he now enjoys some alone time in his playpen with things to occupy him.
We are yet to hit the teens!
Finding somebody to look after him while we go on holiday has been ok. We don’t have family or friends willing to have a puppy but they are likely to occasionally have him when he’s older.
My family love him. I think he’s a pain in the bum but on balance I’m glad we got him. Like you, I’m a fan of older children. I didn’t enjoy my children as babies, I need my own space and I felt suffocated by them. The puppy is like that but he’s improved a lot since we got him (October half term).
I hope that’s a balanced view.