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[quote=Anonymous]
You need to sit everyone down and explain what a puppy entails. Someone needs to stay home with the puppy for the first two weeks, so usually families get one at the start of a vacation. It will entail getting up in the middle of the night for the first week or weeks, doing potty breaks every few hours during the day, watching the puppy like a veritable HAWK for the first month(s) in the house because they will get into everything and chew everything, including live electric cords, and things that can block their intestines and cause 10s of thousands of dollars in surgery. Training is exceedingly important, and needs to start as soon as you get the puppy: they need to taught to "come", "sit", "stay", "down", "wait", "leave it". They need to taught not to jump on people, or bark too much (this can be hard depending on the breed and the dog's personality). They need to be socialized with lots of different humans and dogs at a young age so that they don't become reactive or aggressive. Doggy daycare is great but expensive. And then everything needs to be reinforced when they become teens, which is when you add extra physical and mental stimulation otherwise they can also become reactive or aggressive.

So... do they really want to do this?
As teens, I would totally force them to do the walks with the dog, supervise and train the dog, etc. My own teen and tween have been able to help with our dog and all the foster dogs we've had in our house.

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