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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Congratulations, OP! Yes, puppies can be a LOT for a while (we’ve got a kitten right now — he’s either sound asleep or awake and terrorizing everyone), but having a dog will add so much joy to your family’s lives in the long run.

A few bits of my best advice — (1) teething puppies need to chew, and it goes on for months. If you provide them with approved choices from the start, they will be less likely to make their own, unapproved choices.

(2) If you will regularly walk the dog, we’ve had great success with giving puppy a cue word for going to the bathroom. We don’t try to control anything at first, just give a lot of excited praise (“good pee!!” “good poop!!” or whatever euphemism you choose) every time the process happens naturally. After a few months, a reasonably smart dog will understand whatever word you choose well enough to treat it as a Command if they’re physically ready. We trained my last 2 dogs this way, and it was an enormous improvement from all the hours of my life spent wandering around with my first dog waiting for her to decide on her own schedule!

Crates are both useful and comforting for the dog, unless they’re not. It can be a personality thing — our last dog looooved hers and our current dog wanted nothing to do with one. If it the wire kind, put a blanket or towel over the top to help it feel more like a safe and cozy den.

On pet insurance, I used to have it but found that the terms were set so that it never really covers anything useful. I am enormously pro-insurance for every other part of life and would have kept it for the pets too if not for the bad experiences. Instead, I take exactly the amount I would have spent on premiums and have it auto-deposited into a dedicated savings account. (Probably many banks offer the choice to have multiple dedicated sub-accounts, but I know Capitol One online savings accounts offer them.) That way, when expenses arise you already have the money waiting to cover the expense. We’ve had reasonably healthy pets and [b]we aren’t the type to take heroic measures for seriously sick pets,[/b] but with those caveats, the savings approach has always come out ahead of what we would have spent with insurance. [/quote]

That's why you have come out ahead. But many other people will want to go further with treatment.

And yes you have to read the fine print and determine what coverage is right for you. But it is a good idea for most people to cover catastrophic events.[/quote]

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