Let's start with a simple question, what do you want from your furry friend?
How much do you walk or are you willing to walk?
Or even are you willing to pay someone else to do it?
Are you in the house a lot?
Or do you have a busy life out and about?
Can your dog be a companion joining you on your travels?
Are you wanting a chilled out sleepy dog or a busy bean?
All of these questions are so important, dogs have been selectively bred since domestication. Different breeds have genetic predisposition to certain behaviours, here are a few examples.
Gun dog: Bred for submission, to take orders, to flush out game and retrieve it back to the handler, long days working hard.
Terriers: Where bred to help keep rodent populations in check, flushing wildlife from sets and alert families to potential risk by barking/ raising alarm.
Hounds: To chase and bring down pray, these can be driven by scent and sight. They need lots of exercise and have a high pray drive, this can be worked on and trained, though they will generally need a lot of excersize.
Livestock/ heading dog: These have been bred to round up and keep together livestock, they generally have boundless energy and need a job to do.
Companion dogs: These where bred as companions, or even historically bed warmers, they like to be with there owners.
Most dogs now are purely kept as pets, they are expected to be, calm, obedient, quiet, to be happy to be left home alone for long periods. Do these things fit with the breeds above? When choosing a breed or a dog you need to have a awareness what they have been bred to do and what they need for exercise and stimulation. My dog Mia is a Schnauzer crossed with a poodle. Both breeds are highly intelligent, I swear she is crazy clever, Schnauzers are bred to be family alert dogs and protective. Poodles where originally gun and water dogs, though they have sidelined into emotionally intelligent affectionate lap dogs forming very close bonds with their 2 legged friends..
I knew what I was getting myself into, she does not like being left for long periods of time and has a tendency to separation anxiety it is something I have had to work on at length. I take her with me for most things I do as my little side kick. When I leave her I will only ever leave her for a maximum of 2 hours. If i am going to leave her I make sure she has been physically and mentally stimulated as much as possible, or she is being left with other people or doggy friends.
There is a attitude with some of 'oh just leave them they will be fine, but if I had wanted a dog that did not care if I was here or not, I would have chosen a dog breed that was more alined to this, and even then I would not have left them for any length of time. Though one consideration I wish I had taken into account when getting her was her parents tendency to anxiety. Her mother was an anxious dog and at the time I had not studied canine genetics and I believed it to be a behaviour with appropriate training would be different. Looking at parents temperament is so important and there are a lot of breeders who are not allowing dogs to fully mature and temperament become clear.
I am very happy to help you chose the right dog for your family and share my knowledge and what I have learnt with you.
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