DH and I first started talking about finally getting a dog around 19 months ago. But even after research we just can’t agree on a breed.
Just a bit about our situation so you knowledgeable lot can help!
- three bed Victorian terraced house with a small garden (narrow but not tiny, we have a green house, veg bed and lawn). Live near a small local park and luckily 10 minutes from a very large country park.
- 2 dc, 5 and 7 and both at school. Youngest ds has aspergers (they don’t call it that now but it sounds nicer than ‘high functioning’) and is sad that he has no friends at school, he says his friends are grandads dogs (Dalmatian and JRS).
- DH works from home, luckily only has to do a few hours a day. I’m a part time OU student so also at home all day.
DH loves beagles (he has never owned one) but I’m put off by some of the differing accounts of them. The kennel club page on them reckons they only need a small house/garden and up to an hours exercise a day. However my research has come up with accounts that swung between agreeing with the KC and others which say without 12 hours hard exercise they are demon dogs.
I love SBTs (grew up with two successive dogs but have never owned a dog as an adult). I think that they would fit us perfectly but DH is put off by their ‘rep’ and is worried that he would find them scary. I loved my grinning soppy dogs more than anything.
Clearly I’m biased, but after lurking here for a bit I thought people with more personally experience of actually owning/training the breeds could help us finally make our minds up.
I know we aren’t very experienced. I’ve had a chat with the local dog training club and will be taking future pup there to train/follow the KC good citizen doggy programme.
Happy to put the effort in to whichever breed we do eventually get but we currently seem stuck at a stalemate.