The arrival of a dog in your home is great news. Now is the time to take the plunge and adopt one. However, adopting a puppy/dog is not a decision to be taken lightly. Are you totally ready? Do you have adequate resources? Which breed is right for you? Here are our tips.
Education will also have an important influence on your dog’s behavior, but also on your relationships with It in the long term. Before you rush off, take your time choosing the right dog. Here are some tips to guide you and help you see things more clearly.
Step 1: Ask yourself the right questions
A puppy is not a soft toy that you love one day and reject the next day. Adopting one means having the certainty that you can give it all the love and comfort it needs. So you must:
- Have time to take care of it. Take it out several times a day for several tens of minutes. You will also need to brush it regularly, wash it often, always cuddle it. A puppy is above all a baby who should not be left alone. You devote all your time to it on weekdays, weekends, and during your vacation.
- Have a professional activity compatible with the life of your puppy. Make sure you can take It to your place of work or avoid It being left alone. Working from your home is ideal, as is having a flexible schedule to meet your puppy’s demands as much as possible.
- Have a sufficient budget. You engage with your puppy, who will become a dog, for the next 15 years. Are you financially ready? For Its comfort, Its food, Its health. Thus, it will be necessary to vaccinate your puppy, implant an electronic chip, to take It regularly for a routine consultation with the veterinarian. Expenses which, taken together, can be substantial.
Step 2: don’t choose a dog just for its physical appearance!
For all future dog owners, it is often the physical aspect that triggers the crush. The coat, size, look, and face of the animal often trumps the reason for the future owner.
Apart from the physical aspect, each breed has its behavioral characteristics. You need to know the temperament of your future dog before you commit. It’s also a way to make sure that you will be compatible in order to forge a healthy and harmonious relationship.
Once an adult, the dog may no longer correspond to the owner or what the owner expects from the dog. However, separation remains impossible and the dog becomes more of a burden than a companion. Finally, even if it is small, don’t forget that depending on the breed, this puppy will grow considerably.
The size of the dog must therefore be an important criterion: a large dog remains more restrictive to take on vacation and especially more expensive to feed for example.
Large dogs require a good education since they can represent a greater danger than a small dog. Likewise, the surface area of your home must be able to assume its physical importance.
3rd step: choose your puppy according to your personality
Knowing yourself remains essential to choosing your dog well. First of all, determine your lifestyle, by evaluating your:
- habitat
- daily working time
- free time for your dog
- frequency of traveling (will It be able to follow you?)
- budget to maintain a dog.
You can also define your personality to adapt to the education you will give to your animal with your behavior. Determine your temperament, whether you are more of a calm or energetic person, bossy, or lax.
Do you want a dog to guard your house or a playmate for you and your children? These aspects remain essential to be happy with your dog and to make It, happy as well.
Each puppy has its own character and will develop it alongside you. You will therefore have a big role in the dog It will become. Nevertheless, each breed of dog has its own temperament, its particularity. It’s hard to ask a Chihuahua for the same attention as a Labrador.
4th step: check the good health of the puppy
You have defined your needs according to your criteria and you will finally choose your dog. The problem with puppies is that they are all cute and you can quickly indulge yourself. Be careful not to get emotional at the sight of a puppy who seems sad and abandoned.
However, if you are convinced that one of them will match you, there are still some precautions to take. Examine It and check Its health. It must present:
- normal weight and height (it must not be bigger or thinner than the rest of the litter)
- silky hair and no red spots on the skin
- pink ears and gums with a good smell.
- clean buttocks with no signs of diarrhea, dryness, or incontinence.
5th step: pay attention to the adoption conditions
The conditions of adoption are very tight. They alone sum up what we have just explained to you. Adopting a puppy should be taken very seriously.
Thus, you will need to provide:
- An ID
- Proof of address
- Proof of income (payslip, KBis extract, etc.)
You will be asked for adoption participation. For a puppy of less than 6 months, it will cost you between $118‒$667 of adoption fees “ corresponding to the participation for the identification, the vaccination and the sterilization of the animal ”.
At a breeder …
To know if you are dealing with a good breeder, you must quickly be reassured by his professionalism, his seriousness, his knowledge, and the good behavior of his breeding. When adopting (which will take place over time) from a breeder, it is important to:
- Visit the premises of his breeding before adoption
- Discuss, question the breeder about the mother’s temperament and be able to meet It
- Observe the litter as a whole in order to analyze their behavior in “society” and choose the one that suits you
- Check Its health
To conclude…
Take your time. Focus on researching breeds to build a list of those that might be right for you. Then take the initiative to talk to puppy breeders. They have all the keys and it is they, the specialists, who will give you their opinion in order to avoid big disappointments.
