Things to Keep in Mind in Choosing a Dog

If you don’t yet have a pet dog and wants to have one, the easiest way is to get it from a pet shop. The other way is to go to a dog pound or dog shelter and adopt one. In either case, it will solely be based on “love at first sight.”

Generally, “love at first sight” works fine with dogs, but hardly with people;

The third way is to go theoretical. The Internet is full of “how to select a dog breed” sites. They provide proven methods in selecting a right dog breed for you and, unless you answered the checklists erroneously, will guarantee you owning the “dog of your dreams.”

Whatever way you go, keeping the following in mind will give you long term satisfaction with your pet dog:

1.    Keep away from mongrels (dogs with no definable type or breed):

From the time I was five years old, when I had my first dog, until now that I am 65, I have always had a dog, or dogs. Well, maybe there were certain years of hiatus, but generally I always had a pet dog.

Call it mongrel discrimination but my fondest dog memories are with traceable breed – pure or half.

Dogs with traceable breeds have character, of self-confidence as if saying, “I know who or what I am.”

Mongrels came into my life with a deep sense of identity crisis. Immediately they projected the image of “I don’t know who or what I am.”

We simply didn’t connect. Thus I could never remember any except for an orphan I picked from the street as a pup. She grew up so territorially aggressive that she bit anyone who intruded into her territory - even my son. .

I still could remember the trickle of blood from two deep fang wounds on my housemaid’s upper arm. Her only fault was, while picking off clothes from the laundry line, she came too close to the dog while it was having lunch.

She left me with no choice but euthanasia.

2.    Choosing a dog is more difficult than choosing a boyfriend or girlfriend:

I was spared of this because my dogs were given to me. But you may not be as lucky.

Taking in a dog is not just having a pet. At the outset, you must already consider it as taking a friend, a companion. You must be prepared to share with it your space, your time, your finances, your attention.

You have to be ready to bathe it, groom it, take it for a walk and yes, to clean up its mess.

But believe me, the mess they make is nothing compared to the mess a wrong boyfriend or girlfriend makes.

Dogs don’t’ nag, they don’t demand and they don’t’ have mood swings as horrible as people.

They are contented with the space you give it. But when a boyfriend or girlfriend wants to have ”space,” what he/she really means is for you to bug off from their lives.

3.    Be prepared for a long term relationship:

Don’t take a pet dog just for a whim or for a fad or because a boyfriend or girlfriend gave you one. If you have to have one, do so because you love to have one.

Just like taking in a woman or man to be your husband or wife. It must be out of pure love and desire to be one and live together. That’s what long term relationships are made of.

Having a pet dog is kind of “Till do us part,” thing. I and my two Labradors, one, half breed and the other, pure, have been together for almost six years. This is a lot longer than some of the marriages of some women I meet in my social networking site.

I and my dogs are getting old. Very soon death will do us part. When or who goes first, that I don’t know. What I know is that for now, we are hitting it off greatly.