You want a dog? Adopt one!

While “taking” Guthrie and TeddyBear  for a walk through the woods, I ran across a couple with three small children.  TeddyBear gets by on his considerable good looks (my neighbor Kathleen made that observation) and the parents asked if I got TeddyBear from a local breeder.  “We’re looking for a dog for the kids”, they explained.

 Okay, here’s how it is.  Don’t get a dog for the kids; get a dog for yourself.  If you’re not committed to having a dog, it won’t be fair for the dog to leave its care with kids.  The kids get to share the dog, and that’s great.  A dog is a perpetual infant and, in almost every case, you can’t rely on kids to care for a dog.  It takes maturity to care for another living creature; most kids aren’t ready for the responsibility and/or will be too wrapped up in their own lives to become dog-centric (sigh…like me).  IMHO, getting a dog entails accepting the same responsibility as deciding to have another baby.

 If you want a dog, be a hero and rescue a “pound puppy”.  Too many shelter dogs end up at the Rainbow Bridge before their time.  Please don’t buy a pet from a pet store; most of those dogs and cats are from breeding farms, where the females are bred to death as they generate litters of often-unhealthy young.  I know they’re cute and I know they need a home-just go to the shelter, pay less, and save a life.  You don’t buy a pet in a strip mall.  Do we understand each other?

If you’re looking for a specific breed, there are breed-specific rescue groups.  In most cases, dogs offered by breed rescue groups have been evaluated by “dog people” while in foster care pending the selection of a forever home.  This means you’ll have a good idea of what the dog is like and will be able to decide if the dog’s personality fits in with your lifestyle.  I’ve helped three Golden Retrievers make the transition: I kept TeddyBear and two others have gone on to great homes to new owners who knew exactly what to expect. 

Yes, puppies are cute, but they’re expensive, messy, very time-consuming, and often incompatible with two-legged babies.  There are puppies available from rescue groups but usually the dogs are a few years older, often abandoned by their people when the reality of owning a dog sets in.  The stories behind many of these dogs are horrific, and a demise not unlike Stuntman Mike’s (in Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof”) is too good for the former owners.