What’s keeping you from getting a dog?

Nothing!

Let’s continue our journey of making your goodest bad decision. By now you've made three tough choices. You said yes, your life is fit for a dog. You found out what kind of dog will fit best - hopefully. And most importantly, you listened to your heart. So, what’s keeping you from getting a dog? Nothing. That’s right. You’ve done everything you can to come to an informed and rational decision. Especially by listening to your heart. Where do we go from here? 

A short trip to a time before Bea

Really young Bea with her first bowls.

“Informed and rational” just gave me a major flashback. One day back when we didn’t have Bea in our life, we found this small dog bowl. It was shiny and cute and somehow, without really talking about it, we filled it with water and found a spot for it. This little silly game of pretending we had a dog triggered something within both of us. We started thinking about names, of course, but we also pretended to walk the dog we did not yet have. We calculated the costs of feeding, insuring and taking medical care of our make believe dog. We even went outside when it was raining. Just briefly, but we tried to play this game on god mode. And then Bea came into our lives and it was completely different. Nevertheless, I think we were able to prepare mentally, maybe just subconsciously.

Something

Next stop on your journey to dogville is finding out where to find a dog or a puppy. There are several avenues worth exploration and they depend on your answers to the previous questions. There’s adopting an abandoned dog, finding a dog on the internet and buying a puppy (thoroughbred or not). 

Adoption

Let’s say, you feel comfortable about rescuing a dog. Good for you! That’ll karma up your life! There are shelters probably close by where you live that have a bunch of dogs just waiting for a human to pick them up finally. The shelter however, if it is any good, won’t make it that easy for you. They’re going to have a couple of conversations with you about your living situation, family, apartment, finances, other pets and so on. And they will talk to you about your thoughts and expectations you have and why you want a dog. Answer those questions, be truthful and patient. Most employees of shelters love animals just as much as you do. And they’ll feel like losing a close friend or even family member everytime someone adopts a dog (or a pet for that matter). Adopting from a shelter is a wonderful and relatively easy way of adopting a dog as far as we know. 

If you live somewhere in the middle of Europe, there is also another way of adopting dogs. A lot of organizations will help you find an abandoned dog from Romania, Hungary or other countries in that geographic neighborhood. They are also very thorough and will make sure the dogs get adopted by someone who’ll actually take good care of them. This option will take a bit longer. 

Both ways are great if you ask us and if that sounds good to you, go for it! Bear in mind, however, that you will be adopting - in most cases - an adult dog. Especially abandoned dogs are very likely to have had a tragic past and might have a complicated relationship with humans in general. The organization will help you in every way possible to inform you about the dog's triggers and fears. Make absolutely sure that you can handle those. You don’t want to crush the dog a second time, because you misjudged your capabilities. 

SALE SALE SALE

If you find a dog for sale on the internet, craigslist or any other similar site, run. Run like from a burning building. At least that’s what we’d do. More often than not the people who try to sell you a dog online are crooks trying to scam you. That is bad enough, but the puppies, even if they look cute and adorable in the pictures you see, are probably sick, possibly dying already and the whole interaction will just bring calamity and misery. I cannot be more clear. Don’t do it, unless you are 100% sure you can trust the seller. And I heavily doubt you’ll be able to do so. If you give these scammers money, they’ll keep going, they’ll keep hurting dogs and people.

The pros!

And then there are dog breeders. They’ll have homepages, they’ll try to sell you their puppies, of course, it’s business. We got Bea from a breeder. First of all try to find out a little bit about the breeder. Because, believe it or not, even among them there are enough who’ll put profit above all else. Some don’t even care about their breed or anything, they just see the thousands of bucks they can make with just one litter. But of course there are so many good guys. Breeders with knowledge, proficiency and love will want to get to know you, just like shelters. We met with Bea’s breeder several times before her and we were sure that it’s a really good match. We had wonderful and deep conversations, not just about dogs. I can say we became friends with her and we are still talking regularly with her on the phone and visit her from time to time. Maybe we got lucky with meeting this lovely woman and maybe you will too! Puppies can be expensive, though. It all depends on the breed, so I really can’t give you any numbers. So your research on the price points on the internet, ask people who have the breed you want and I’m sure, you’ll be able to figure out everything you need to know. 

That's what you can expect at a pro breeder: pure bliss.

Conclusion

There are just as many ways you can get scammed as you can get a dog. There are many people out there who have no shame and so many dogs that have to suffer because of it. So please, be careful, use your brain (the detective part) and your knowledge of human nature (gut feeling)  when it comes to buying or adopting a dog. 

In the next post, I’ll be writing about our first encounter with Bea. So stay tuned! And in the meanwhile, please let me know about your experiences with adopting or buying a dog. Has anyone ever tried to scam you?