New Dog or No

For those of you who don't know (and I'm sure you do since everyone that reads this is also my friend on Facebook), our dog died in October. Sunday October 11th, to be exact. It is now March and I'm still crying just typing that. We had this dog longer than we had half of our children. He lived to be 13 years-old. He was an excellent dog. His mother was a pure-bred, papered Australian Cattle Dog. His father was a neighbor's pure-bred Akita that snuck out of his yard. TBone's mom's owner gave the puppies away for free because she was mad that her papered dog had mutt puppies.

TBone never played ever. I later learned that was probably and Akita trait. He had ZERO herding tendancies - as a matter of fact he would sit and watch the bunnies and birds in the yard. He looked scary but was the nicest dog I've ever met. Even when we got the puppies (a brother and sister pair, both 6 years-old now) he never guarded his food and was very laid-back. We moved into a new house twice since we've had him and he lived out at the campground with us for around 8 months, and he adjusted perfectly. The only trouble we ever had with him was he would somehow get off his chain when he was outside and he'd go roaming the neighborhood looking for girlfriends (I know he sired at least one litter) and once he ate six blocks of mouse poison.

He was a good dog.

Now, the whole REASON I got puppies was because TBone was old and my youngest child was nearing 5 years of age and I was worried I'd freak out because I have never in my life been in a house without a child younger than five years of age. So I got the puppies. TBone stuck around for a long time, but I actually didn't think I'd have three dogs for that long. There are many problems with having three dogs. It's hard to walk all three of them. For the most part I did great but the kids won't ever walk three. Vet visits are difficult ~ in fact I usually scheduled two one trip and one the next trip. And when it comes to vacation time no one will take them. At least now that we have a fence I could just hire a kid to come over and let the dogs out in the morning with their swimming pool full of water and some food, and then come back in the evening and put them to bed. Bath time was a three to five hour ordeal depending on if I had to brush TBone or not OR we had a bath a day spread out over three days. Also other reasons.

Now that TBone is gone I'm happy with my two puppies. In my mind, this will go one of two ways. Either Butterfly would (eventually) die first and Porkchop would be perfectly happy being an only dog, or Porkchop would go first and we would have to get another dog because Butterfly will not survive if she's the only dog in the house. I maintained that the next time I got a dog, it would be a Dalmatian puppy. Dalmatians have always been my favorite animal of all time and I've never had one because I had too many other responsibilities. Now I have no small children, so if it came down to just Butterfly who NEEDS another dog, I could get one (assuming I have the money ~ they are expensive lol).

The other night my husband suddenly announced that we needed another dog. I tried to talk him down, but he started looking into rescue groups looking at other dogs. So he talked me part-way into getting a third dog, but my main problem is he wants an Australian Cattle Dog. I'm not sure he understands how different an ACD would be from our TBone. They are herding/working dogs that would have a TON of energy! For the most part, Dalmatians are pretty high-energy so that wouldn't be a huge problem, but it's whole personality would be completely different from our nothing-bothers-me TBone Horatio.

Still I told him I don't want another dog with skin issues, but deafness I can handle, and for now he's just looking.

I don't think I'm ready for another dog - thinking of TBone still makes me sad - and I think underneath it all the Mr is also still just sad. I think he WANTS another dog to take away that sadness. So maybe after a few weeks he won't feel that way anymore.

I guess we will see.