Is it ethical to bring a new dog into this situation?

[Anonymous]

I am a single parent with two teenagers and an elderly dog who I suspect won't live much longer.

For the past couple years, my kids have been campaigning for a puppy. I've been pretty clear that we won't get a puppy while our current dog is alive, as I think it would overwhelm him, but I'm open to the idea for after. I'd love to have a companion when my kids go off to college.

But we have days, especially during the fall sports seasons, where everyone is out of the house for long periods of time. Not every day, as I sometimes work from home, but a few days a week the last person leaves around 7:15, and the first person to get home arrives close to 6.

If we got a puppy at the end of the school year, we'd have a few months before this came up, and by then he'd be old enough for daycare. We could also do a dog walker. But is that fair to a young dog? Are there certain breeds that would do better with this than others?

[Anonymous]

If you can pay for a walker / day care then you're good to go. Bad only if you're leaving the dog unattended for the entire day.

[Anonymous]

A few days a week seems like a lot for a young dog. You can’t bring the dog to any of the practices? I often bring mine to soccer practice and then walk around the park while the kids play. It saves a lot of time versus driving back and forth twice and doing the walk later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few days a week seems like a lot for a young dog. You can’t bring the dog to any of the practices? I often bring mine to soccer practice and then walk around the park while the kids play. It saves a lot of time versus driving back and forth twice and doing the walk later.

My kids are high school athletes, so they stay at school to play. There isn't time to come home, get the dog, and bring it back.

[Anonymous]

I couldn't & wouldn't bring a puppy/young dog into such a situation unless adopted from a kill shelter & I would be saving the dog from a near certain death well before his/her time.

[Anonymous]

I would not do this to the elderly dog, or to the puppy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would not do this to the elderly dog, or to the puppy.

You think it's unfair to an elderly dog to get another dog after it dies?

[Anonymous]

Why not get a 1-2 year old dog instead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not get a 1-2 year old dog instead?

It's definitely a possibility, I'm not sure a 1 year old dog in daycare is more ethical than a 6 month old dog in daycare.

The kids want the experience of raising a puppy. My current dog is older than one of them, and came to us as a young adult when the other one was too young to really help or to remember, so they don't have experience with dog training.

If I was convinced a young dog would be more ethical, or easier, I might offer that as a compromise, but I'm not sure.

[Anonymous]

The old dog might get a new lease on life with a young companion... or might find the intrusion unpleasant. You cannot predict how it will go on that front.

Most puppies are adopted at around 8-12 weeks old, whether it's from breeders or from rescues who take in pregnant dogs. So the puppy could be 5-6 months of age when they need to get into daycare. That's too young for medium and large breeds (and indeed, smaller breeds too!) to be sterilized. At that age they need socialization. So unless you get an older puppy, this won't work optimally for the pup.

- human who fosters pregnant dogs and puppies for a rescue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The old dog might get a new lease on life with a young companion... or might find the intrusion unpleasant. You cannot predict how it will go on that front.

Most puppies are adopted at around 8-12 weeks old, whether it's from breeders or from rescues who take in pregnant dogs. So the puppy could be 5-6 months of age when they need to get into daycare. That's too young for medium and large breeds (and indeed, smaller breeds too!) to be sterilized. At that age they need socialization. So unless you get an older puppy, this won't work optimally for the pup.

- human who fosters pregnant dogs and puppies for a rescue.

If we do this at all, we'll do it after the old dog dies. There is no way that he would want to share his humans. Plus, he's pretty deaf and blind and arthritic and sleeps a lot so staying away from a puppy would be hard.

He doesn't stay alone all day, he hangs out with a relative who works from home. But I don't feel like I can ask the relative to take on a puppy, so we'd need a different plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The old dog might get a new lease on life with a young companion... or might find the intrusion unpleasant. You cannot predict how it will go on that front.

Most puppies are adopted at around 8-12 weeks old, whether it's from breeders or from rescues who take in pregnant dogs. So the puppy could be 5-6 months of age when they need to get into daycare. That's too young for medium and large breeds (and indeed, smaller breeds too!) to be sterilized. At that age they need socialization. So unless you get an older puppy, this won't work optimally for the pup.

- human who fosters pregnant dogs and puppies for a rescue.

Can you tell me more about this?

[Anonymous]

We found it much easier to adopt two dogs as opposed to just one. Get a male and a female. Wonderful to watch them play together & sleep together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The old dog might get a new lease on life with a young companion... or might find the intrusion unpleasant. You cannot predict how it will go on that front.

Most puppies are adopted at around 8-12 weeks old, whether it's from breeders or from rescues who take in pregnant dogs. So the puppy could be 5-6 months of age when they need to get into daycare. That's too young for medium and large breeds (and indeed, smaller breeds too!) to be sterilized. At that age they need socialization. So unless you get an older puppy, this won't work optimally for the pup.

- human who fosters pregnant dogs and puppies for a rescue.

Can you tell me more about this?

If a young puppy is left alone for long stretches of the day, with only a dog-walker at midday, they are much more prone to developping unnatural behaviors towards other dogs and maybe human strangers, such as leash reactivity while on walks and aggression off leash, in and out of the home. It's like what happened to certain kids during the Covid lockdown - they were behind not only academically, but socially. Unfortunately dogs don't have the long period of learning capacity that humans have, their window is much shorter. So you need to adequately train and socially expose your puppy when he or she is a puppy, otherwise the problems might be lifelong.

[Anonymous]

We got an older puppy from a rescue and it was a good fit for us. She was about 4-5 months old when we got her and she was already housebroken and sleeping through the night. We got to skip a lot of the very little puppy hassle of having to wake up at night and take her out super frequently. She did still need lots of socialization, exercise and training for the first 2 years.