I’d be very leery of any “hypoallergenic” claims. The only way to tell if your wife is allergic to a dog is to have her interact with it and see if she has a reaction. Not to mention that if it’s a cross-breed, it’s possible that you get the allergic genes from the OTHER, non-hypoallergenic parent.
How bad is the allergy? Is it controlled or controllable with OTC meds? If not, she should see an allergist BEFORE your daughters fall in love with a pup that they maybe won’t be able to keep, if their mother can’t live with it.
The purebred dog industry has its issues, sure, but most breeders have the best interests of their breed at heart. Of course their focus isn’t going to be producing undersized and otherwise flawed pups for the pet market. They want to improve the breed by aiming to produce the ultimate specimens according to the breed standard, which are judged in the show ring. Along they way, they produce lots of other perfectly nice dogs, which are sold to folks like you.
That’s how I got my dog. One of my son’s friends got a puppy, but didn’t really keep up with her. She was a serious chewer.* He lived with his Mom. After the third pair of her shoes became scraps, Mom put her foot down. No more. The next thing Kayla got was her favorite pair of boots. So I got Kayla.
*Very serious. I got her a big crate and she had to stay in it when I was at work or asleep until she was three. I tried dog proofing a room. She ate a wooden chair. I tried using a furniture pad for a spread. She chewed through it and ate the blanket underneath. She was the sweetest, most helpful girl other than that. I was really glad when the phase passed.
When I was maybe three years old, my parents got a Samoyed puppy, supposedly for me. I don’t remember it well at all, but I do know that they used to put it in the laundry room some days as a substitute for a crate since it was a nice puppy-proofed room. It chewed through the drywall, squeezed through the studs, chewed through the drywall on the other side and got loose in the house.
And because I’m well aware of the board rule the mention of a specific dog or cat requires a photo, here’s proof for you. Proof of what, I don’t know exactly. Maybe that the early 70s were a hideous hideous place.
I spent a few hours on Petfinders last night and other rescue sites for this area, and no joy for any dog that I think would be a good fit. Just did some advanced searching on petfinders and will have to check in the coming days as nothing close now.
Part of me thinks that getting a good adult that we can pre-check for being a great fit or not is a good way. Part of me thinks if we’re going to go through the whole dog thing, that would like to experience from puppy hood and the kids would do the obedience partner thing. Probably going to come down to what we find.
Animal Planet on Samoyed’s rates them pretty high as family dogs but requires exercise and daily grooming. If we go the Samoyed route, it will be with a reputable AKC breeder. All of these that I have contacted list pedigrees, awards, shows, photos, and most are located n a farm. I’m in email contact with a few and will be talking to them. No puppies for now but there are a few litters coming, and a couple of the breeders have long waitlists already.
Bichon Frise is smaller than what we want. And no offense to those that are poodle lovers, they don’t work for me and never have.
Which kid? Most obedience schools have an age limit, around here (Bay Area) they wouldn’t take anyone under 16. There are probably other options (a 4-H club, for example) but there’s a reason dog trainers don’t want to work with kids - it’s too hard. Even a teenager doesn’t necessarily have the reflexes or timing to become a great trainer, and it’s really all about timing.
Also, there’s no age limit for starting obedience training. Dogs are as, or even more amenable, to learning obedience cues, when they’ve grown out of puppyhood. Watch puppy videos on YouTube for your cuteness fix.
All dogs require exercise. The more they get, the happier and less work they’ll be to have in your home.
…like PetSmart: I took my dog to their puppy class when she was 5 months old, and they allowed entire families to attend the classes. I believe it was the same for their more advanced classes. Their idea was that it’s best if everyone in the household is on the same page – or as close as possible – when it comes to training the dog. Made total sense to me. I can see more formal obedience schools having an age limit, though. That also makes total sense to me.
I’ve been to over a dozen, maybe twenty, 8-week obedience training classes with my 3 dogs over the past 12 years and sometimes teens and kids come. Rarely do they come for more than 3 or 4 weeks. I don’t know if they’re bored or busy but…
FWIW I can’t say I’ve ever been in a class with a man who was the main trainer - the one who signed up for the class and brought the dog every week. Maybe 1/5 of dogs are brought in by a couple (sometimes the man stops coming), but the rest of us are women who bring the dogs and carry through with the classes.
Not sure if this is universally true, about the kids or the men, but expect your wife to be the one who ends up doing the training. How does she feel about that?
I had a Samoyed when I was a teenager. Here’s what a remember:
Pros:
-Loveable, friendly dog. My parents often had friends over, many who had younger kids. The dog was never a problem.
-Very obedient. Not as much as our Sheltie, but still obedient. We put him through a 3-month obedience training course, though.
Cons:
-Stupid. Just… stupid. He was dumber than a rock, and often got himself into trouble over it (like trying to sniff things that were underwater).
-Chewed EVERYTHING. Once, for whatever reason, he took a dump in the house. No biggie, cleaned it and flushed it down the commode… and when I went in to the bathroom some hours later, the toilet bowl had half a dozen rainbow-colored coins in it. Dumb dog had somehow got ahold of some pocket change and had eaten it.
-Shed hair constantly. A couple years ago I found in my shop a tapedeck that had been installed in the '75 VW van I was driving at the time. The thing still had white hairs on it from the dog, dead some 15 years. We brushed him every few days and took him in for professional grooming every other month or so, it seemed to make no difference. If you get a Samoyed, you will get white hair on and in and around every single thing in your house, and as FCM says you will be finding that hair for years and years after the dog is gone.
He was my childhood dog, so I squee and get all nostalgic when I see one (especially the puppies. OMG they are cute!), but the adult in me would never let me have one again. Too high-maintenance.
If I ever got another dog, it would be a Sheltie or a German Shepherd. Probably a Sheltie.
Quick update if anyone cares: We’re gonna wait until the beginning of next summer for a Samoyed puppy. Want to have time for the bambinas to actually concentrate and do a good job of working with the puppy. All the AKC folks within a few hour drive don’t have any puppies available for the next two months or so.
I’m in touch with several of them, and they all seem to think we are a good fit to take one of their smaller puppies that aren’t obvious for the show ring.
I have also started to put the word out about potential adult adoptions. The right adult we can “test drive” is a good option and could be any kind of mix.
Had one nice lady checking to see if we were interested in her formerly show dog Samoyed. Unfortunately, the dog was 9 years old, which doesn’t seem like a good fit for us.
You may want to touch base with some rescues and volunteer to foster - they are usually looking for good, loving homes to house puppies until they get adopted, and cover all costs. The pros are that you get to “test drive” a puppy and the kids will understand better the effort involved, and you are doing a really great thing. The con is that you have to give up the puppy when the time comes (although we foster-failed on our third dog).
What about your wife’s allergies? A Samoyed seems very likely to trigger them and if you get a puppy and end up having to rehome it, you will have used up its most adoptable weeks.
You can - as I said, we did on our third foster puppy. You would still pay the adoption fee (since it covers their vaccinations and pay/neuter), but you do get first dibs.
