My journey to dog ownership

Spoiler alert, but anyone who follows me on Twitter or Instagram will know that we recently became puppy owners.

That will probably come as a surprise to people who have known me for a long time, as I’ve never been a dog lover. Or even an animal lover. But that has changed in recent years.

As a child and well into adulthood, I was quite wary of dogs. I didn’t hate them and I wasn’t scared of them exactly, but I didn’t like them barking, licking or jumping up. I was (and still am) a bit of a germophobe, so I didn’t want to touch one as I would then have an overwhelming urge to wash my hands.

But I started to change a little bit when my brother got a puppy in 2008. My brother has always been a dog lover and I could see how much joy his dog gave him. Then lots of other people seemed to get dogs and they all talked about how much joy and love a dog brought to their families.

I even started to stroke friends’ dogs and found them to be lovely and soft (genuinely, I had no idea what it felt like to stroke a dog). I would always wash my hands afterwards, but it didn’t have to be instantly.

I started to notice different sorts of dogs and started to think that maybe I might have one when the kids leave home.

Anyone who knows me or follows my blog will know how much I adore my guinea pigs. Having guinea pigs turned me into much more of an animal lover than I’d ever been previously. I realised just how much you could love an animal, even one as small as a guinea pig. Having them was almost an outlet for the sort of love I couldn’t give my kids any more. You can’t talk to teenagers and young adults in a baby voice and tell them how lovely they are, but there was a part of me that still wanted to do that. I realised that’s what pets are for!

It was when my younger son was in year 9 that he really started to want a dog. He asked over and over again. His friend’s family had recently got a dog. His mum told me that they’d planned to get one when the kids left home, but then felt it was unfair – as the kids really wanted the dog! Maybe we needed to get a dog sooner rather than later.

But my daughter ‘hated’ dogs. She was scared of them. She has a very clear memory of yelling at her brother in Padstow and telling him that if we got a dog, she would leave home. She was 12 at the time.

But a couple of years later, she decided she would like a dog too. She was still a bit scared of them, but she realised that if she had her own dog, she wouldn’t be scared.

But my husband was very clear that we didn’t need a dog.

Although when one of my guinea pigs died, I can’t remember if it was Wilfred or Cedric, he said that if we didn’t replace the guinea pig, we could get a dog. I didn’t believe him and I was never going to leave a guinea pig on his own anyway. But every Christmas and every birthday I started joking – ‘Have you got me a dog?’.

Since the first lockdown, it feels like EVERYONE has a dog and we were the last ones who didn’t. I didn’t know how anyone afforded them. The prices were ridiculous – £2,500 or more.

My daughter and I had looked at the local animal shelter. You could get a rescue dog for £150, but most wanted homes without children (even without teenagers) and wanted experienced dog owners. We would never manage to get a dog from there!

And I must admit that having a nice settee and carpet was holding me back. We spent a lot of money on that settee three years ago and the thought of it being chewed or pooed on filled me with horror. I would be gutted if they were destroyed.

Towards the end of last year, my husband spent a lot of time talking to people with dogs and finally decided that he would like one. He got advice on crate training and looked at different dogs he thought he would like. He also became very taken with my son’s girlfriend’s dog, who is a cockapoo with a bit of Yorkshire terrier thrown in. The dog has done parkrun a few times and been inside our house, where she is incredibly well behaved. It feels very safe to let her in the lounge and up the stairs.

I always thought I’d like a labradoodle, but realised they were quite big. Then I started thinking about a cockapoo (or cockerpoo), which look very similar to the labradoodles (being half poodle), but are a more manageable size.

A friend of my daughter’s said she would be having cavapoo puppies in the spring. Cavapoos are like small cockapoos – being half spaniel and half poodle. But cavalier King Charles spaniels are smaller than cocker spaniels, so cavapoos are smaller than cockapoos. There are a lot of advantages to cavapoos. It would be nice to get a dog from someone we knew, so we went on her waiting list.

But I knew I wanted a dog I could run with. Would a cavapoo be too small?

We talked about the timing of a dog. The spring? The kids would be doing A Levels and GCSEs. Not ideal. The summer? We would be going on holiday. The autumn? My son would be going to university. There was no perfect time.

In fact, there was no time like the present.

I’ll tell you all about that in my next post.