Ask yourself
Do you have enough time each day to spend with a dog?
Dogs need a great deal of our time. Morning walks, activities during the day, evening outings, socializing, training, grooming, veterinarian visits, feeding and more.
Do you work 8-10 hours a day?
Think about the long and lonely days that your puppy/dog will spend all by themselves.
Are you willing to spend the money to hire a dog walker or doggy daycare?
Are you going to be able to come home midday to take your dog out?
Are you up for longs walks when you get home from work?
How about dealing with an over energized dog who has spent the whole day alone and bored.
Have you considered where the new addition will spend their long days alone?
Have you thought about what will happen to your home while you are away?
It is a sad life for a dog to spend their life in a crate/kennel; have you considered this?
Dogs get bored easily so they need you to spend lots of time with them. No dog should spend up to 10 hours all alone every day. This means that you may need to break up the day for them by hiring a dog walker, placing them in doggy daycare or coming home midday. Are prepared for any of these things?
Do you enjoy a good 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night? Is a good nights sleep extremely important for you?
Consider that it can take months for a puppy or dog to settle in to sleeping through the night; how will you deal with this?
Puppies can need to get up a couple of times a night until they adjust.
Screaming is a very real thing, your new dog will probably cry, whine and bark very loudly the first couple of nights to weeks.
If they’ve been alone all day, imagine how much energy they still have at night when you get home and are tired from a full day of work.
Are you willing to get up in the middle of the night, crazy early in the morning and late at night to take your dog outside?
Your sleep pattern will change for a while, that much I know to be true. I’ve yet to meet a dog who sleeps through the night no problem, from the get go. Sometimes the first night is quiet because of the huge transition for puppy or adult, but the nights after? Not so much.
I cannot tell you how many clients of mine are sleep deprived. New dogs and/or puppies can be detrimental to a good night sleep. A full night sleep can seem elusive with the new canine addition. This is a very important part of bringing home a new dog; your life and sleep will most definitely be impacted.
Social life, what social life? Do you consider going out and hanging with your friends to be an “essential” part of your life?
There will be times when your dog must come before social plans.
How much of an inconvenience will cancelling plans be to you?
Imagine being gone all day, then going out again in the evening; leaving your dog at home alone again? Not a good idea.
Will you pay a pet sitter to hang with your dog if you need to go out for an extended social event?
Dogs should be let out every 4-6 hours as an adult, much more often as a young puppy.
The more time spent with a puppy, the more well adjusted adult they will be.
Puppies/dogs need a great deal of our time. If you don’t put the time into your puppy/dog in the beginning; then the struggle to have a smooth life together will take much longer. As a k9 guardian, it is our job to spend the time required to create a great life for our dogs.
There will be sacrifices to be made in the beginning. This is something that should be considered thoroughly before bringing a dog home. It is sad when you bring a dog home and then figure out that you just don’t have the time that is required to live with a dog.