MidwestRoadie wrote:
RangerGress wrote:
Go get a puppy.
...had good dogs growing up, miss it, and want my kids to have the experience. It would probably be good for me as well. I'm ready, but my wife isn't, so my task is to narrow down the best breeds for our lifestyle, start the hunt, and bring the kids in to beg with their cutest faces once we've found a couple. Or just bring one home and suffer the short term consequences, which is certainly an option.
I totally agree. The boys, 12, 12 & 14, are now old enough to see how to train the puppy. 1000x times, over the past month, I've seen them handle a situation with the puppy in a manner that was not ideal, and then I asked the boy..."what did you just teach the puppy?". I'd like to think that they are starting to understand the idea that if, when removing the puppy from the table, you fail to but some steel in your tone, that you're teaching the puppy that it's fine to get on the table. Or if you chastise the dog a couple minutes after some offense, the dog has no idea what you're mad about and just concludes that it lives in a crappy chaotic environment where random chastisement has to be accepted. I'm kinda hopeful that the kids will figure out that clarity re. bad deeds and consequences, and good deeds and praise aren't just truths about puppy training, they apply equally to humans. 2 of the 3 boys might be introspective enough to get that.
The boys got to see how a puppy is potty trained, by gradually increasing the spaces in the house that it will think of as "it's home". Running the risk of getting all Norman Rockwell-ish, for some inexplicable reason, every boy should learn how to train a dog. That's the foundation they will eventually use to train their own kids. Of course, our lunatics surviving to have their own children remains iffy.
Re. wife. For both dogs, I worked on wife for months to get her from "clearly against the idea" weakened down to "I'm weary of this". Once I sensed her resistance weakening, I launched. The puppy did the rest. Puppy jumped in wife's lap as I told wife that she was the one that would be naming the puppy. When faced with that adorable puppy, the wife didn't have a chance. She instantly melted.
We have mostly hardwood floors and that helped a lot with the trials of potty training. I should have rolled up what rugs we do have immed tho. That would have saved me some $$ because 2 of the big rugs got sent out for cleaning.
Summer was perfect time to get the puppy because the boys are home from school. Would have been tougher to do with no one home during the day.
Books @ Amazon "If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart