new puppy?

neveah

hi all im in a right pickle .
we have a 18month old golden retreiver
yesterday i fell and dislocated my shoulder whiich has put me out of action and agony .im a sahm ;
in 7 weeks time we are meant to be getting a husky puppy but after my accident i dont think its a good idea as wont be able tpo look after it properly and its not fair on him
my dh and dd say im being mean and they will di it all but what about when they are in school and work
i just dont know what to do x

krlyr

I think you're being very sensible to reconsider the puppy. Even aside from your injury, you have a young dog in the house already - a large breed tends to mature slower than a smaller breed and often dogs can go through a second teen phase at 18 months or so, so you may not be out of the woods in terms of puppy-like behaviour with your current dog. I don't think an adolescent dog is the best role model for a puppy, who will learn a lot of its behaviour off the current dog.
I would be concerned that your shoulder might cause lingering problems (I injured my shoulder and had problems with it for years - I didn't dislocate it but you don't know what lingering damage may have been caused yet)
Huskies are quite a demanding breed in terms of exercise needs and they can also have quite an independant streak - they're not the easiest of breeds when you're fully mobile, let alone restricted by injury.

I would be delaying it - mostly because of your current dog really, because you probably could work around your injury if you wanted to, but if I were to get a puppy I would make sure my adult dog was 110% sorted, settled and matured. I have two dogs with behavioural issues (one was fine but then developed a medical condition which caused anxiety and we have some lingering issues) and it is more than twice the work because the dogs bounce off each other and rile each other up. For example, one of my dogs is fear reactive but I worked on this and was making a lot of progress. Since the other developed her thyroid problems, she started to become reactive and if I walk them together, Casper can become more reactive. Introducing a puppy now could cause issues to flare up with your current dog, and any reverting to teenage behaviours from your older dog could lead the puppy astray during its vital learning phase too.

neveah

thankyou for that .it makes sense funny enough my goldie has started being a bit naughty and i said to dh i cant walk him for a while let alone a husky x

krlyr

What problems are you having? Is he pulling on the lead? You might want to look at the 300 peck method for him, I've used it with good success http://www.druidalegsd.karoo.net/300_peck.pdf

But definately worth bearing things like that in mind before getting a puppy, because that's just the kind of bad habits they'll pick up from another dog. Especially important to get good lead manners in a breed like the Husky that is known to have poor recall and therefore will generally spend a lot of its time on-lead!