- Choose a
dog to suit
your lifestyle.
Home space, grooming, exercise requirements,
holiday plans.
- Choose a
dog that suits your financial situation.
Purchase price, desexing, ongoing vaccinations,
registration costs, feeding and housing,
grooming, training. Unforeseen extras like
illness that can and does occur.
- Choose a
dog after researching breeds that are suitable.
Health tested parents, health background, its
early litter life, possibly see the parents as
some sort of guide to your pup’s potential or
rescue a health tested, vaccinated and desexed
dog from a reputable rescue organization.
- Choose not
to breed and desex your pet.
There
are health and living style benefits your vet
will outline- and it’s socially responsible to
avoid roaming dogs and random litters.
-
Microchip and register your dog.
Ask your council about age requirements.
- Maintain
regular worming, vaccinations and flea
treatments to
maintain the dog’s health.
-
Contain your dog on your own property
ie public control. Unless you have it on leash
out walking, at authorized obedience activities
/off-leash park or restrained for car travel
etc.
-
Socialise your dog to
other dogs, cats, and animals and people as well
as outside situations and noises. No dog comes
programmed and it is ready to soak up good and
bad experiences and develop most of its
character from how humans manage its life.
- Train
your dog to basic obedience
which makes it easy to live with and may one day
save its life. Lead to heel, sit, stay, come, NO
or Drop! are most important as is bite
inhibition. A good rule is
'never allow a pup to do what you wouldn’t
like a full grown adult dog to do'
Gentle removal from situations and quiet time
for the pup assists this training.
-
Always supervise babies, toddlers and children
under teens with dogs.
This is especially important when the dog is
strong and/or child is young, or it is a unknown
dog or a dog in a strange place. A dog with
correct temperament is still a dog and only the
flight or fight is available to dogs fearful,
threatened or protective, or with low pain
threshold etc. Children move fast, yell, grab,
pull, and dogs not their own or unsocialised
fully might feel a need to nip. Prevention is
far better than cure and all documented dog bite
statistics prove any dog can bite.
- Teach
children not to approach strange dogs
and to ask the owners permission if they can pat
their companion. Also educating children in how
to avoid attacks or how to behave if a loose dog
ever rushes at them is imperative.
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