February 1, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode we dive into the topic of how many dogs a person should have. How many dogs is the ideal number? How do you know how many dogs is too many? Will getting another dog make life easier or harder with your current dog?
Let us know your opinion in the comments!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And we are rolling. Welcome, Vloss, welcome.
So we are doing another episode like last week where you're
going to surprise me with a topic with questions from
viewers and we're going to answer them.
Is that is that isn't That's an accurate statement, right?
Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.
(00:21):
I mean, we're going to do it a little bit different.
I, I, I went with a topic of sorts again.
So we get tons. Of.
Client and viewer questions about should I get another dog?
So it sort of led me down the path of how many dogs is the
right number of dogs for any household?
(00:41):
And I thought we could just start off by talking about that.
Is one dog the right number of dogs?
Is it 2? Is it 3?
How do people know how many dogsthey should get?
So I figured we could start fromthere and then I have a bunch of
questions that sort of piggybackoff of that topic.
OK, wow, there's a lot to unpackthere.
(01:02):
So I think I'm going to start with the famous answer of it
depends on a lot of stuff. If you have, for me, the perfect
number of dogs is 2. So for my household we always
have like 2 dogs. Is is my goal and I think it's
the ideal number. The reason being they can play
with each other. Dogs kind of like kids enjoy
(01:25):
kids haven't like have another kid around dogs like have
another dog around for me and weneed to dive back like or get
back in a minute to why I said it depends.
It really depends on if your first dog is good and if you
have time. But if your first dog is good
and you have the time to work with them, in some ways two dogs
can be easier than one dog. But that only works if your
(01:47):
first dog is good. So I would not get 2 dogs at
once. And I don't know if we need to.
We talked a lot about littermatesyndrome.
I don't know if we need to today.
But if you have one dog that's house broken and well trained
and listens and you get another one, it's going to be easier to
house break that one. It's going to go faster and
they're going to a playmate and you can go in the yard and hang
(02:08):
out with them while they chase each other around.
So if your first dog's good, I think 2 dogs makes life easier
the majority of the time. Can I just throw out there that
you jumped so far ahead already?I mean, I had in the list of
things like huge reminder, don'tget 2 puppies at the same time.
Talk about litter mate syndrome.But now you already did that.
(02:30):
So like, are we going to have todo it again or should we talk
more about it now? I think maybe we just call it if
I covered, let's just it's done to be a 2 minute episode.
Reminder, don't get 2 puppies atthe same time, likely to cause
litter mate syndrome. Yeah.
So I guess then backing up a little bit, I would almost
(02:51):
always when a client says shouldI get another dog and it's early
in the training process, I say no, you shouldn't yet.
You know, if you have us out there and your first dog has
aggression issues or is unmanageable and wild and crazy,
getting another dog is not goingto help.
And it's not going to be easier.It's going to be really bad.
It's going to make everything way harder than it needs to be.
(03:14):
So I'm a huge believer in get your first dog trained so
they're in a position where you like their behavior before you
consider a second dog. OK, I think that's great advice
too. I also think that's like jumping
into like 3 of the other questions as well.
So why don't we try this then? So who do you think?
(03:36):
What do you think are good situations where one dog is the
appropriate solution for a family?
For a family or just for somebody?
Somebody, a family, either one, because I mean, that is a big
part of it, at least in my head,is how many people are there
compared to how many dogs? But one of my big questions for
(03:56):
this topic because is, does thateven really matter?
Yeah, I mean, times that I thinkhaving two dogs would be less
fun if you live in an apartment,even if it's a big apartment.
To me, having two dogs is less fun because that's two dogs to
be taken out to the bathroom, two dogs that could conceivably
(04:17):
have enough, you know, more likely to have an upset stomach
issue in the middle of the nightand now you're running the dog
outside, you know, So that wouldbe a time where if you're in an
apartment, I think having two dogs increases the challenge
versus making life better because they're not playing in
the backyard together like I described in that, you know,
ideal scenario, you know, and then like what I explained to
(04:40):
clients is so I have two dogs, they're really well trained,
they listen really well, but there's times where it's much
harder than having one. And one is like when we're
traveling and we travel with thedogs, I don't care how well
trained they are, walking two dogs is more than walking one
and bringing 2 bags. You know food for two dogs is
(05:00):
harder than bringing food for one.
And two leashes, 2 collars, all of that stuff.
Man, you are typing aggressivelyover there.
Is that loud? Yeah, there's going to be
comments like Matt Covey nailed that question about how many
dogs. But man, the typing it was, it
was loud. I'm not going to type anymore
(05:21):
then that's all the typing I'm going to do.
So like young family that says I, we're we're gone 12 hours a
day every Saturday and Sunday, the dog, our dog goes with us to
soccer games and then this and then that.
Having two and one person's watching the dog, that sounds
like it would suck to have two. And now you're trying to manage
two dogs at the kids soccer games and baseball tournaments
(05:42):
and all of that. So at home with a fenced in
yard, I think 2 dogs is easier than one traveling or living in
an apartment. I think 2 dogs has some serious
downsides. So what I'm getting is one dog.
It might be best for people in an apartment, people who travel
a ton. Van life people, maybe van life
(06:05):
people. Probably one dog.
Like sprinter van. If you live in a sprinter van, I
think 1 is better than two. Yeah, or even like, you know,
like a conversion van. Do people still call things
conversion vans anyways? Smaller than a Sprinter van,
still probably one dog. And then what about if it's just
a single person? Does that again, Does that
(06:26):
matter? Should you have more dogs than
there are? People, I wouldn't be like, so
if I was single, which I'm not contemplating, for the record,
I, I plan on continuing to be married.
But if I was single, I would want two dogs for the reason I
said earlier where, you know, like if I'm, you know, home and
(06:50):
I'm cooking dinner or whatever, they can play with each other
and run around the yard and do dog stuff together.
But like if if I had a client inan apartment and it was a young
couple or whatever, guys age here in this scenario is
irrelevant. A couple and they both really
like dogs and they're both goingto be walking them, then yeah,
maybe 2 is not harder than one, one person apartment.
(07:11):
Two or three dogs. That to me sounds less than fun.
OK, the reason I keep going backto this question, I found online
that some people will say that you shouldn't have more than two
dogs per one person. So they're making that like a
rule of thumb is no more than two dogs per adult person.
(07:33):
And I, I didn't know if I reallyliked that rule or not.
I feel like that still allows for a lot of dogs for a couple,
but that's a rule that I saw thrown out there.
Sounds like a weird rule. So two adults would have four
dogs would be a good number, but5 would be crossing the line.
Yeah, that's that's what it was suggesting.
(07:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean that's a lot 4 dogs.
That's how I felt to me the Max I would want personally.
And I think 2 is the the right number and you said, you know,
for us, but I could see having three.
I could not see having 4/4 is a lot of dogs.
And something for that I like tothrow out to clients is
(08:17):
something to think about dogs, you know, people tell you like
be calm, be assertive. Your dog will follow.
A lot of that's BS where dogs what they do is they adopt
higher energy. They don't really adopt lower
energy. So if you bring a, a third dog
in the house who's like super chill, your first and second dog
(08:39):
are not going to like, oh, that dogs chill and now they're going
to become more relaxed. It doesn't work like that.
But if that third dog is wild, it's going to reflect negatively
on your first and second dog. They always adopt A higher
energy and every dog has their own trigger.
Some dogs get fired up about squirrels, some about the
neighbor kids, some about the smoke detector goes off, some
(09:01):
Thunder, whatever. But the more dogs you have, the
more triggers you have, the morepotential triggers, and there's
a good chance every other dog isgoing to get fired up when the
first one does. And what I mean by that is one
dog runs the window barking about squirrels.
Even if your other dog doesn't care about squirrels, he's
probably going to run to the window barking because he
(09:22):
doesn't know it's a squirrel. He's just adopting that higher
energy. So the more dogs you get, you
start running some serious risksof now you could have nine
different triggers that you're trying to deal with and every
dog is getting amped up all the time.
So that that's my worry for a client.
When you're talking about 3 dogs, four dogs, it's five dogs.
It starts to become a lot of potential triggers out there.
(09:45):
I agree with you. Do you think that there's a
number that is too many dogs? Like if you had to say anyone
number is just that's too many dogs for a family to have I.
Don't know. I have never walked into a
household of five dogs and then like, wow, they've got it under
(10:10):
control, they're doing it, this is good, everything's fine.
I've never seen that. Now we've helped clients create
that, so you can have five good dogs, but it's a lot of work.
So in my opinion, anything more than three is starting to play
with fire. And if you said, hey, I'm a dog
trainer, well that's different, right?
For all the dog trainers listening, you know, some dog
(10:32):
trainers have five dogs and we push back and say they're
awesome. Well, you also do this for a job
because that's a lot different than the average owner.
I think anything more than 3 is a pretty crazy decision to make
for the average person who's nota dog professional.
Yeah, I think you and I are on the same page with that, that
those were my numbers too. Is that Oh, wow.
(10:54):
If you, if you hit 5, like if you're 5 and over, that's
probably too many dogs. But anything over three I would
say is a lot of dogs. I'm not saying it's too many,
but it's a lot, right. But once you hit five, I think
you're pretty much there. Like that's, that's, that's a
ton of dogs there's. A lot of dogs and you know those
(11:16):
households we see where they, like I mentioned, they adopt the
higher energy. So when we're calling it called
in for five dogs, I can tell you, excuse me, basically every
time there's aggression issues going on in the house and not
necessarily between the pack fighting each other.
I mean, that happens a lot, but you know, leash reactivity or
(11:37):
insane when someone comes to thedoor because with all those
dogs, they tend to feed off eachother and they feed off each
other up, up, up, up, up. The energy climbs until you have
an issue. So I'd have to really think
hard. Have I been called in with five
dogs where there wasn't aggression going on?
I can't think of a time off handthat I've I've had that and
(12:01):
maybe there is, but I can't think of one off.
Hand either any of the, you know, when I start getting in in
my head into situations where there have been lots of dogs
like that, like 5 plus dogs, I feel like there's always some
fairly major issues going on there where it's like these
three dogs can't be around thesetwo dogs.
So I'm separating these three and these two have to go outside
(12:24):
at this time. Like it just gets really crazy
really quickly. So I agree with that.
What do you think the average number of dogs per household is
in the US? Wow this is an intense question.
So of dog owning households or this is also counting households
that have 0. No, it's of dog of dog owning
(12:47):
households. 1.8. It's lower than that 1.6 across
the US. There's one state that has a
much bigger number and it's Nebraska has 2.3 dogs per per
per dog owning home. I don't get it.
(13:08):
Any thoughts? Why do you think Nebraska is
like? Bird dogs I'm going hunting for
sure. Really.
People have got 3 Vislas and a pen.
Sorry if you're in Nebraska and I'm offending you, but in like
in the country in the Midwest you see that right?
The pens in the backyard full ofGSPS and Vislas and but people
(13:31):
hunt. Everywhere.
Like why would Nebraska have waymore hunters?
I don't, I don't think is Nebraska that rural.
Yeah, OK. To ask if Nebraska's that rural
means you've never been in Nebraska.
You know, I can't tell you if I have or not.
Maybe I've been through Omaha. Nebraska is like Iowa without so
(13:53):
many people. That's saying a lot, right?
It's crazy. I've driven through it on the
way to Colorado. It's nuts.
You'll go like, I don't know howlong, but a lot.
The farms there are massive where like, you know, in central
Illinois and Iowa, you pretty much anywhere you are, you look
around, you see a few farmhouses, they might be half a
(14:14):
mile away, but you're always inside of a couple.
And there it's like you look around and you're driving and
it's like minutes and minutes at60 miles an hour before you see
another house. It's crazy.
Yeah. Well.
I don't know if that's the reason or not.
I don't know. I was going to guess like
somewhere in the South was goingto have the highest and it was
(14:35):
going to be for like scent hounds, like people with, you
know, 10 Coon hounds or 10 beagles because those people
have a lot of dogs. Yeah, wouldn't, I would think
Alaska would be really high withwhat we were talking about last
week of, you know, sled dogs, right?
Yeah. I wonder what percentage of
(14:56):
people partake in sled dog activities though.
Well, but there's not a lot of people up there either.
So then you would think a lot ofthe people that are there have
dogs and then a sled dog team like those people probably have
like 20 some dogs, right. So that's going to skew the
average a time that would. Skew the average.
(15:17):
All right, Nebraska, a lot of dogs.
So there are laws on the number of dogs, right?
You know, different municipalities all have
different laws on this type of thing.
What are your thoughts there? And have you ever really seen
anybody get into trouble with that kind of thing?
So I don't know. It's easy to have an opinion
(15:40):
when you're not in the position of making the rules.
So I'm not a big fan of government regulation and
government overseeing, like the micro, the small details of our
lives. So I'm hesitant to ever say
like, yeah, I think it's good that a bureaucrat is like
deciding how many dogs someone can have.
But I'm a big fan of nuisance laws.
(16:02):
And I think it's annoying and frustrating that they're not
enforced better because, you know, you see people that have
one dog that's obnoxious and, you know, annoys the whole
neighborhood and you can have someone else, the four that
aren't a problem. So I think I would rather see
nuisance laws enforced and people getting tickets for like
(16:23):
you have a dog barking for more than a couple minutes, that's an
issue. Your dog shouldn't be barking
for minutes at a time in a neighborhood.
And I think every listener knowsand everyone deals with that.
It's those are like, I don't know anywhere that seems to
actually enforce them. I feel like they don't enforce
anything to the dog bite somebody.
So that's. What about people getting in
(16:45):
trouble for that kind of thing? So I have one client that really
comes to mind for this where I think I want to say it was a six
dog household and the limit for their town was three dogs.
And when they had me come out, they must have asked me 20 times
if I was going to report them. Like they thought like I was a
(17:07):
mandatory reporter of the numberof dogs that they had.
And they were so freaked out andworried about it.
And I'm like, I don't really care that you have 6 dogs.
Like I'm not going to go to your, to your police station and
be like, hey, go to this address.
Look how many dogs they have. I've but I've never heard of
anyone get in trouble for breaking one of these
ordinances. It doesn't seem like it's
(17:29):
applied until there's neglect, right?
And they, you know, animal control gets called and someone
has 20 dogs. But you know what kills me about
those stories all pretty much always is.
There were lots of calls leadingup to it.
It's not like there's one call made, animal control shows up
and like fixes, you know, takes the dogs away.
Feel like generally it's call after call after call and then
(17:53):
finally they go and, you know, find out it's horrific
conditions. So I would love to see nuisance
laws enforced more and less worry about number of dogs.
So you're saying that the numberof dogs ordinance wouldn't be a
nuisance law, You're separating those?
(18:15):
I'm separating those. Yeah.
To me, the nuisance law would bewhen you're creating a nuisance
through noise, smell, whatever you know with the you know with
in the neighborhood as opposed to just an ordinance on the
number of dogs. That's interesting.
When you were talking about the nuisance laws, I was thinking
you were combining number of dogs as a nuisance law.
(18:35):
So. No.
So for the record, I was not, I,I think that generally speaking,
those laws, not only are they not really enforced, but if, if
they're not a nuisance and they're not causing any trouble
and there's no allegations of trouble, then who cares if you
have four or five dogs? OK, so I think one of the most
(18:57):
common situations where a personconsiders getting another dog is
when they already have one and they feel like that dog is bored
and needs a friend for company because it's just, you know,
seems lonely sort of. Is there anything to that?
You've already touched on this alittle bit, but is there
(19:18):
anything to that? And is that a smart decision or
a good reason to get that seconddog?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great reason to get a second dog
if you like the behavior of yourfirst dog.
So most dogs are in my opinion are going to be happier with
another dog in the household. So if your first dog is good, I
(19:39):
would, I think in a second one is great.
And obviously, you know, if lostsick, we deal with this with
clients a lot where and you know, I'm dealing with that
right now with a Frenchie that I'm working with that has some,
you know, serious behavioral issues that we're making a ton
of progress. And I think that dog, having a
dog buddy long term is going to be good and is going to
alleviate lots of stress and give the dog an outlet and it's
(20:01):
going to be a great thing. But not until we get that first
dog to quit biting people, you know, because you've got to fix
that first. Otherwise you're trying to house
break a dog and stop your dog from biting someone that's, you
know, not very workable. But overall, I'm a big believer
2 dogs are going to be happier. Just like with kids, I think
generally speaking, two kids aregoing to have more fun together
(20:23):
than one kid sitting on the couch by himself.
OK. And I think that's a really
important factor there, right? So if one dog is already with
you and showing bad behaviors, don't get that second dog yet.
Address those things first. The second dog is not just going
to or second or third dog, right?
If you have two dogs that are already having issues, don't get
(20:45):
a third dog thinking that that third dog is somehow going to
fix the other two. Yes, it's not going to do that.
And then are there, do you have questions about finances or
money? That's that's the next question
is gonna be, well, it's actuallyreally the next consideration
that I feel like we haven't talked about.
(21:05):
Yeah, is just how much dogs costand it can be expensive to have
them. I don't think a lot of people
think about that when they're thinking about getting a dog.
So what do you wanna talk about with that?
I mean, I was just going to throw out, I've seen clients
make this mistake, right, where they get another dog and they
look at her like the other dogs,not that expensive, like to buy
the dog, right? But they're not thinking about
(21:27):
vet care. They're not thinking about now
when you board your dog. Now all of a sudden, when my
dog, one dog used to go with me on a lot of trips, two dogs are
not. Now you're boarding both dogs.
And now if you're training them both, those costs go up.
It just gets expensive and I getit when people have one dog and
(21:47):
they think I bet he'd like a playmate, but I don't know if I
want to commit to that, that ongoing cost and I I get that
completely. So I just wanted to flag that
because we hadn't talked money at all yet.
And there's a lot of times wherelike, I don't shame people like
you should get another dog, a playmate for this one.
You know, that's the decision you need to make yourself.
(22:08):
And if you were to say like, I kind of want one, but
financially I don't think it makes sense.
That's a great it's a great thought to have.
And you don't want to get another dog and then realize now
all of a sudden you can't feed them the food you want to and
get them trained and boredom. Yeah, there's definitely a lot
of expenses. I think vet bills probably end
(22:30):
up being the biggest additional expenses.
You keep adding dogs. Yeah, But the one that really
shocked me when I first got a second dog was boarding fees.
Yeah, it makes going on vacationcost so much more when you have
to board two dogs together and then pay for your trip like that
was. I just remember that being like
(22:51):
a huge shock to me how much thatended up costing.
Yeah, it adds up in a hurry. And that's where so much comes
down to the lifestyle. Because if you said the dogs, I
have a friendly dog, I'm going to get another one and socialize
and train it so it's friendly. And I have a neighbor kid who
will come over here five times aday when I'm on vacation, and
then the dogs can play in the backyard.
(23:12):
Then, you know, second dog couldactually help things.
And I know for us, when we leaveour dogs, we feel better leaving
2 versus 1 because they get to do dog stuff and wrestle and
have fun and they're not by themselves.
So, so I think this is a really big factor though for people
thinking about getting lots of dogs.
So, you know, boarding fees for two dogs is a lot boarding fees
(23:35):
for three dogs, four dogs, five dogs, right?
Those costs are just astronomical at that point.
So what it leads to a lot of people doing is then just not
taking a trip and feeling like they're stuck at home because of
their dogs, right. And if if you're the type of
person, and we talked about thisa little bit earlier, if you
want to travel, you don't have to just be the type of person
(23:56):
who's living in a van. If you want to travel, having
five dogs is going to make it really difficult for you to take
5 trips in a year, right? I mean, those costs are just
going to add up like crazy. 100%.
Jumping back to to sort of a more positive point of it, and I
think you've already touched on this a little bit as well.
(24:19):
When you get a second dog or a third dog, you've already
learned a ton from your first oryour second dog, right?
So whether it be about training or just vet care or having a dog
in your house, the second or thethird dog is generally way
easier, right? Because you already know things
that you didn't know when you had the first dog.
(24:41):
So that's one of the huge pointsI have here is, you know, you've
already gained the knowledge of having a dog, so now it's a lot
easier to add additional dogs from there.
Yeah, I would agree with that statement.
You're more experient, no matterhow many dogs you've had in the
past, you're now just by logic or definition more experienced
(25:02):
because of the last dog or the current dog that you have.
So in theory, you're you know, better at raising dogs and then
it's worth throwing out to people.
That's easier to house break a dog, a puppy when you have
another dog in the household because that you let the other
older dog go out, the puppy is going to most likely follow them
in the yard, excited to see whatthey're doing.
That other dog pees the puppies more likely to just squat and
(25:25):
pee right there. So house breaking your second
dog is usually way easier because you have more experience
and your your older dog already makes the yard smell like pee
and there's you know, it makes sense to the puppy where to go.
So that makes things quite a biteasier.
So I know you're not going to believe this, but we've gone
(25:46):
through all the the topics on mylist.
So what more would you like to cover about multiple dogs?
When it makes sense to get another dog, That type of thing.
I would definitely like to talk about the sex of the dog.
So we get this question a lot. And I think it might be because
(26:08):
we're called in and a lot of aggression cases.
So people that have an aggressive dog fighting and
biting and that's on their mind.So they ask like what what breed
is more likely, I'm sorry, not what breed, what sex is more
likely to be aggressive or not? And you know, you hear all these
things, right? Like people say like, oh, man,
(26:28):
females, you have two females. If they get to fighting, oh,
it's so much worse than males. But then you have others that
say the opposite. And in my experience, people let
their previous experiences colortheir opinion too much.
Even some newer trainers who've been at this maybe a couple
years or so where they're like, oh man, 2 males.
(26:50):
It's just so different if you have two intact males that start
fighting, but they're basing that on a client they had a year
ago that was their worst aggression case ever.
And it was 2 male Roths and it was horrendous.
And so that sticks out on their mind.
But then you talk to another trainer who's like, no females
man. You get some females in the
house that don't like each other, but they're thinking of
(27:10):
the two female Kane Corso's theyhad five years ago.
That was their worst aggression case ever and I can tell you
from my experience having done this for so long, it doesn't.
In my opinion it doesn't seem tomatter as far as like our
opposite sex maps. So a male and a female in my
opinion are way less likely to fight each other than two males
(27:32):
or two females. But are two males harder to have
or two females? Honestly I don't see enough of a
difference after doing. I've been doing this since 2006.
I, I can't look at what I've seen through life and say, oh
man, there's a big difference because in my opinion there is
not. It does make a difference
(27:52):
though. If you have one dog and you're
getting a second, I would get the opposite sex for sure.
So you have 1 male get a female.No, that's a no brainer.
And then if you're getting a third dog, well obviously you
know, there's just two choices and you're like, well, I have a
male, I have a female. What do I get for the third one?
And the way I explain that to a client is if I know they're
(28:13):
dogs, I'll just tell them you look at your two dogs, which one
is the least likely to ever fight and get another one of
that sex. So if your female dog's pretty
high strung and she's kind of bossy to the male and the male's
this like dopey gentle giant, I'd probably get a your third
dog would be a male. And then the opposite.
If you've got a male who like pushes other male dogs around
(28:36):
and a really sweet, silly femaledog, then for sure I'd get a
female. If both of your dogs, if you're
like, I don't know, they're bothkind of jerks.
I would think really hard about getting a third dog.
You might be, you know, kind of ruining your peaceful household
at that point. And if they're both just happy
go lucky easy dogs, then who cares?
Get 1/3 of what whatever sex. And maybe if you're if you're
(28:58):
getting, whether you're rescuingor buying a dog, you just could
just evaluate, right. And go into it saying I don't
care what sex this dog is, I just want to find a happy dog
that fits with my lifestyle and you pick the one that makes the
most sense. Yeah, I think that's really
great advice. I wish more people would follow.
I feel like most people just seea dog fall in love with it and
(29:21):
get it regardless of gender, age, issues that already exist
in their household. Yeah, I would say I'm a big
believer in spay and neuter and I feel like for a while, you
know, like that whole like push of spay and neuter to not have
(29:41):
more puppies in the world, like that's that's good, right?
I'm not opposed to that push, but I feel like behavioral stuff
wasn't talked about there. So then people are like, well,
I'm not going to let my dog get loose and go knock up the
neighbor dog. So it doesn't really matter, but
it does matter and it is going to affect your dog's behavior.
I think it's nuts to not spay and neuter dogs.
(30:03):
I think that's just absolutely asinine in, you know, think it
through. And I we've talked about this in
previous episodes. I don't believe in spaying and
neutering young. So I'm not saying you should
like get a puppy and spay it at,you know, 12 weeks or 8 weeks.
I wouldn't do that I believe andlet him go through a cycle 1st
and then spaying them and then amale dog waiting as long as you
(30:23):
can before they start kind of showing tendencies you don't
like, like more marking, you know, mounting other dogs,
things like that. So not a fan of doing it young,
but I think it should be done. And that is, in my opinion,
going to decrease the risks of dog on dog aggression in the
house, regardless of what you read on the Internet.
(30:44):
Because I don't know if you did research for this philosopher,
if you've seen the same thing. But I've seen studies that show
the most likely dog to bite is aspayed female.
And I've had a client tell me before, like, well, I don't want
to get her spayed because I did the research and a spayed female
is the most likely dog to bite. Like I, I don't know, like I'd
be curious to read that study. Like I've seen that quoted
(31:07):
online, but like, where did you choose these dogs from?
And like, I just have so many questions.
I've never seen that actually. Yeah, and we talked about it
when we had a, you know, a vet on the episode a few months
back. Not, not as far as biting, but
just like, you know, there's studies that'll say, you know,
(31:28):
not spaying your female dog is actually better because of, you
know, this risk or whatever. There's studies that show
everything. But overall, I, I think without
a doubt, I would get, you know, all your dogs spayed and
neutered. You're going to, I think overall
healthier dogs and for sure lesslikely to have aggression
issues. But just know it's not a magic
fix. You're not going to neuter your
(31:50):
dog and like, wow, now he's a good boy.
We neutered them and like, everything's great.
Like that's not that's not how it works, but it will make
things easier to fix. Yeah, I agree completely.
I think spayed, neutered Zoe's going to make the most sense for
a female dog. I just like wouldn't want to
deal with the diapers and stuff every month.
So that alone is probably going to get me to do that.
(32:13):
I can. I can understand that for sure.
And you know, that usually the people that are really, really
up in arms about waiting and arelike angry if you'd spay or
neuter too soon are breeders andthey're like freaking out if you
do it too soon. That's usually I feel like
you're like, well, you know, whatever, do it before it's too
(32:36):
late, you know, seem less worried about it.
And then rescues are like spaying and neutering dogs at 8
weeks a lot of times. Yeah.
And for me, the only time that Isee clients that really don't do
it is just if they say they're thinking about breeding the dog.
But I'd also throw out that I feel like most of those people
don't ever go through with that.So I feel like almost leave that
(32:59):
to breeders, right? And then just get your dog
fixed. Yeah, that's a whole, whole
nother subject. But my opinion would be if
you're not strategically trying to better the breed, then you
shouldn't be breeding dogs. And if your goal is like you're
you're educating yourself and you have a plan to better the
(33:21):
breed, then it like someone's got to be a breeder.
So I'm not anti breeder by any stretch, but when you're like, I
don't know, he's a good looking dog.
I feel like I should breed them.To me, that's kind of silly.
And, you know, maybe you talk toa breeder and if they evaluate
the dog and want the dog, you know, as a stud, maybe that does
(33:42):
make sense. But to breed them yourself, I
think it's usually not not ideal.
But I agree with you all the time.
We deal with clients who say I'mthinking about breeding and it
just seems like they never ever do.
Yeah, for sure. So what else do you have?
Number of dogs. I don't know if I have anything
else. I mean, we covered all the big
(34:03):
things I would talk about with aclient.
And I think maybe a closing thing would be don't ruin your
peaceful household. If you've got two dogs that are
like I mentioned this a minute ago, that are kind of high
strung, but they get along well and somehow suit each other, you
have to really think carefully. Do you want to bring a third dog
(34:24):
into the mix and all of a suddenhave a problem?
SO2 high strung dogs. I don't think getting a third
dog is a very, very wise choice at that point.
Yeah. And then definitely the flip
side of that, if you have a household that's already
absolutely crazy, don't bring ina third dog to try and fix the
absolute craziness. Yes.
(34:46):
That's not going to fix it. Agreed.
And our multi dog households pretty much always, like I said
earlier, have aggression. I shouldn't say multi.
Our five dog household clients pretty much always have
aggression issues. And like I said, I can't think
of a time that I've been to a house with five dogs that didn't
have that. So why you know, just hearing
(35:07):
those statistics like why would you want to take that risk?
It would be my opinion and thinking through how was this
third dog or 4th or 5th going tomake your life better and the
life of your other dogs better? And then you get to that point
where you're not walking them and or you're walking in shifts
so that you don't walk very longbecause it's not fun and you've
(35:31):
got two other shifts of walking to do and then the dogs aren't
getting what they need. Even just taking them out or
putting them out in the yard to go to the bathroom, doing that
and shifts at all, it becomes a lot of work feeding them and
shifts. And feeding five dogs is, for
most people, turns into a littlebit of a chore.
(35:53):
Guess I'd say a lot of bit of a chore.
Yeah, and if you're lucky and they don't have any food
allergies and they can all eat the same food, that helps.
And if you've raised him properly and you don't have
fighting between them, that helps.
But when we're called in with five dogs, there's, you said it
earlier, there's always shifts. And like these two in here, this
one eats by himself and these two, you know, can be over here.
(36:15):
And that is, that's a hard life.All right.
Well, did we cover it? Did we do it all?
I think we did it. OK, good topic.
I hope this is helpful to peopleand if we convince one person
with two dogs to not get a thirdand then just enjoy their life,
I think I think we did somethingtoday.
Yeah, for sure. All right.
(36:36):
Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks everyone.
And we are rolling. Welcome, Vloss, welcome.
So we are doing another episode like last week where you're
going to surprise me with a topic with questions from
viewers and we're going to answer them.
Is that is that isn't That's an accurate statement, right?
Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.
(00:21):
I mean, we're going to do it a little bit different.
I, I, I went with a topic of sorts again.
So we get tons. Of.
Client and viewer questions about should I get another dog?
So it sort of led me down the path of how many dogs is the
right number of dogs for any household?
(00:41):
And I thought we could just start off by talking about that.
Is one dog the right number of dogs?
Is it 2? Is it 3?
How do people know how many dogsthey should get?
So I figured we could start fromthere and then I have a bunch of
questions that sort of piggybackoff of that topic.
OK, wow, there's a lot to unpackthere.
(01:02):
So I think I'm going to start with the famous answer of it
depends on a lot of stuff. If you have, for me, the perfect
number of dogs is 2. So for my household we always
have like 2 dogs. Is is my goal and I think it's
the ideal number. The reason being they can play
with each other. Dogs kind of like kids enjoy
(01:25):
kids haven't like have another kid around dogs like have
another dog around for me and weneed to dive back like or get
back in a minute to why I said it depends.
It really depends on if your first dog is good and if you
have time. But if your first dog is good
and you have the time to work with them, in some ways two dogs
can be easier than one dog. But that only works if your
(01:47):
first dog is good. So I would not get 2 dogs at
once. And I don't know if we need to.
We talked a lot about littermatesyndrome.
I don't know if we need to today.
But if you have one dog that's house broken and well trained
and listens and you get another one, it's going to be easier to
house break that one. It's going to go faster and
they're going to a playmate and you can go in the yard and hang
(02:08):
out with them while they chase each other around.
So if your first dog's good, I think 2 dogs makes life easier
the majority of the time. Can I just throw out there that
you jumped so far ahead already?I mean, I had in the list of
things like huge reminder, don'tget 2 puppies at the same time.
Talk about litter mate syndrome.But now you already did that.
(02:30):
So like, are we going to have todo it again or should we talk
more about it now? I think maybe we just call it if
I covered, let's just it's done to be a 2 minute episode.
Reminder, don't get 2 puppies atthe same time, likely to cause
litter mate syndrome. Yeah.
So I guess then backing up a little bit, I would almost
(02:51):
always when a client says shouldI get another dog and it's early
in the training process, I say no, you shouldn't yet.
You know, if you have us out there and your first dog has
aggression issues or is unmanageable and wild and crazy,
getting another dog is not goingto help.
And it's not going to be easier.It's going to be really bad.
It's going to make everything way harder than it needs to be.
(03:14):
So I'm a huge believer in get your first dog trained so
they're in a position where you like their behavior before you
consider a second dog. OK, I think that's great advice
too. I also think that's like jumping
into like 3 of the other questions as well.
So why don't we try this then? So who do you think?
(03:36):
What do you think are good situations where one dog is the
appropriate solution for a family?
For a family or just for somebody?
Somebody, a family, either one, because I mean, that is a big
part of it, at least in my head,is how many people are there
compared to how many dogs? But one of my big questions for
(03:56):
this topic because is, does thateven really matter?
Yeah, I mean, times that I thinkhaving two dogs would be less
fun if you live in an apartment,even if it's a big apartment.
To me, having two dogs is less fun because that's two dogs to
be taken out to the bathroom, two dogs that could conceivably
(04:17):
have enough, you know, more likely to have an upset stomach
issue in the middle of the nightand now you're running the dog
outside, you know, So that wouldbe a time where if you're in an
apartment, I think having two dogs increases the challenge
versus making life better because they're not playing in
the backyard together like I described in that, you know,
ideal scenario, you know, and then like what I explained to
(04:40):
clients is so I have two dogs, they're really well trained,
they listen really well, but there's times where it's much
harder than having one. And one is like when we're
traveling and we travel with thedogs, I don't care how well
trained they are, walking two dogs is more than walking one
and bringing 2 bags. You know food for two dogs is
(05:00):
harder than bringing food for one.
And two leashes, 2 collars, all of that stuff.
Man, you are typing aggressivelyover there.
Is that loud? Yeah, there's going to be
comments like Matt Covey nailed that question about how many
dogs. But man, the typing it was, it
was loud. I'm not going to type anymore
(05:21):
then that's all the typing I'm going to do.
So like young family that says I, we're we're gone 12 hours a
day every Saturday and Sunday, the dog, our dog goes with us to
soccer games and then this and then that.
Having two and one person's watching the dog, that sounds
like it would suck to have two. And now you're trying to manage
two dogs at the kids soccer games and baseball tournaments
(05:42):
and all of that. So at home with a fenced in
yard, I think 2 dogs is easier than one traveling or living in
an apartment. I think 2 dogs has some serious
downsides. So what I'm getting is one dog.
It might be best for people in an apartment, people who travel
a ton. Van life people, maybe van life
(06:05):
people. Probably one dog.
Like sprinter van. If you live in a sprinter van, I
think 1 is better than two. Yeah, or even like, you know,
like a conversion van. Do people still call things
conversion vans anyways? Smaller than a Sprinter van,
still probably one dog. And then what about if it's just
a single person? Does that again, Does that
(06:26):
matter? Should you have more dogs than
there are? People, I wouldn't be like, so
if I was single, which I'm not contemplating, for the record,
I, I plan on continuing to be married.
But if I was single, I would want two dogs for the reason I
said earlier where, you know, like if I'm, you know, home and
(06:50):
I'm cooking dinner or whatever, they can play with each other
and run around the yard and do dog stuff together.
But like if if I had a client inan apartment and it was a young
couple or whatever, guys age here in this scenario is
irrelevant. A couple and they both really
like dogs and they're both goingto be walking them, then yeah,
maybe 2 is not harder than one, one person apartment.
(07:11):
Two or three dogs. That to me sounds less than fun.
OK, the reason I keep going backto this question, I found online
that some people will say that you shouldn't have more than two
dogs per one person. So they're making that like a
rule of thumb is no more than two dogs per adult person.
(07:33):
And I, I didn't know if I reallyliked that rule or not.
I feel like that still allows for a lot of dogs for a couple,
but that's a rule that I saw thrown out there.
Sounds like a weird rule. So two adults would have four
dogs would be a good number, but5 would be crossing the line.
Yeah, that's that's what it was suggesting.
(07:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean that's a lot 4 dogs.
That's how I felt to me the Max I would want personally.
And I think 2 is the the right number and you said, you know,
for us, but I could see having three.
I could not see having 4/4 is a lot of dogs.
And something for that I like tothrow out to clients is
(08:17):
something to think about dogs, you know, people tell you like
be calm, be assertive. Your dog will follow.
A lot of that's BS where dogs what they do is they adopt
higher energy. They don't really adopt lower
energy. So if you bring a, a third dog
in the house who's like super chill, your first and second dog
(08:39):
are not going to like, oh, that dogs chill and now they're going
to become more relaxed. It doesn't work like that.
But if that third dog is wild, it's going to reflect negatively
on your first and second dog. They always adopt A higher
energy and every dog has their own trigger.
Some dogs get fired up about squirrels, some about the
neighbor kids, some about the smoke detector goes off, some
(09:01):
Thunder, whatever. But the more dogs you have, the
more triggers you have, the morepotential triggers, and there's
a good chance every other dog isgoing to get fired up when the
first one does. And what I mean by that is one
dog runs the window barking about squirrels.
Even if your other dog doesn't care about squirrels, he's
probably going to run to the window barking because he
(09:22):
doesn't know it's a squirrel. He's just adopting that higher
energy. So the more dogs you get, you
start running some serious risksof now you could have nine
different triggers that you're trying to deal with and every
dog is getting amped up all the time.
So that that's my worry for a client.
When you're talking about 3 dogs, four dogs, it's five dogs.
It starts to become a lot of potential triggers out there.
(09:45):
I agree with you. Do you think that there's a
number that is too many dogs? Like if you had to say anyone
number is just that's too many dogs for a family to have I.
Don't know. I have never walked into a
household of five dogs and then like, wow, they've got it under
(10:10):
control, they're doing it, this is good, everything's fine.
I've never seen that. Now we've helped clients create
that, so you can have five good dogs, but it's a lot of work.
So in my opinion, anything more than three is starting to play
with fire. And if you said, hey, I'm a dog
trainer, well that's different, right?
For all the dog trainers listening, you know, some dog
(10:32):
trainers have five dogs and we push back and say they're
awesome. Well, you also do this for a job
because that's a lot different than the average owner.
I think anything more than 3 is a pretty crazy decision to make
for the average person who's nota dog professional.
Yeah, I think you and I are on the same page with that, that
those were my numbers too. Is that Oh, wow.
(10:54):
If you, if you hit 5, like if you're 5 and over, that's
probably too many dogs. But anything over three I would
say is a lot of dogs. I'm not saying it's too many,
but it's a lot, right. But once you hit five, I think
you're pretty much there. Like that's, that's, that's a
ton of dogs there's. A lot of dogs and you know those
(11:16):
households we see where they, like I mentioned, they adopt the
higher energy. So when we're calling it called
in for five dogs, I can tell you, excuse me, basically every
time there's aggression issues going on in the house and not
necessarily between the pack fighting each other.
I mean, that happens a lot, but you know, leash reactivity or
(11:37):
insane when someone comes to thedoor because with all those
dogs, they tend to feed off eachother and they feed off each
other up, up, up, up, up. The energy climbs until you have
an issue. So I'd have to really think
hard. Have I been called in with five
dogs where there wasn't aggression going on?
I can't think of a time off handthat I've I've had that and
(12:01):
maybe there is, but I can't think of one off.
Hand either any of the, you know, when I start getting in in
my head into situations where there have been lots of dogs
like that, like 5 plus dogs, I feel like there's always some
fairly major issues going on there where it's like these
three dogs can't be around thesetwo dogs.
So I'm separating these three and these two have to go outside
(12:24):
at this time. Like it just gets really crazy
really quickly. So I agree with that.
What do you think the average number of dogs per household is
in the US? Wow this is an intense question.
So of dog owning households or this is also counting households
that have 0. No, it's of dog of dog owning
(12:47):
households. 1.8. It's lower than that 1.6 across
the US. There's one state that has a
much bigger number and it's Nebraska has 2.3 dogs per per
per dog owning home. I don't get it.
(13:08):
Any thoughts? Why do you think Nebraska is
like? Bird dogs I'm going hunting for
sure. Really.
People have got 3 Vislas and a pen.
Sorry if you're in Nebraska and I'm offending you, but in like
in the country in the Midwest you see that right?
The pens in the backyard full ofGSPS and Vislas and but people
(13:31):
hunt. Everywhere.
Like why would Nebraska have waymore hunters?
I don't, I don't think is Nebraska that rural.
Yeah, OK. To ask if Nebraska's that rural
means you've never been in Nebraska.
You know, I can't tell you if I have or not.
Maybe I've been through Omaha. Nebraska is like Iowa without so
(13:53):
many people. That's saying a lot, right?
It's crazy. I've driven through it on the
way to Colorado. It's nuts.
You'll go like, I don't know howlong, but a lot.
The farms there are massive where like, you know, in central
Illinois and Iowa, you pretty much anywhere you are, you look
around, you see a few farmhouses, they might be half a
(14:14):
mile away, but you're always inside of a couple.
And there it's like you look around and you're driving and
it's like minutes and minutes at60 miles an hour before you see
another house. It's crazy.
Yeah. Well.
I don't know if that's the reason or not.
I don't know. I was going to guess like
somewhere in the South was goingto have the highest and it was
(14:35):
going to be for like scent hounds, like people with, you
know, 10 Coon hounds or 10 beagles because those people
have a lot of dogs. Yeah, wouldn't, I would think
Alaska would be really high withwhat we were talking about last
week of, you know, sled dogs, right?
Yeah. I wonder what percentage of
(14:56):
people partake in sled dog activities though.
Well, but there's not a lot of people up there either.
So then you would think a lot ofthe people that are there have
dogs and then a sled dog team like those people probably have
like 20 some dogs, right. So that's going to skew the
average a time that would. Skew the average.
(15:17):
All right, Nebraska, a lot of dogs.
So there are laws on the number of dogs, right?
You know, different municipalities all have
different laws on this type of thing.
What are your thoughts there? And have you ever really seen
anybody get into trouble with that kind of thing?
So I don't know. It's easy to have an opinion
(15:40):
when you're not in the position of making the rules.
So I'm not a big fan of government regulation and
government overseeing, like the micro, the small details of our
lives. So I'm hesitant to ever say
like, yeah, I think it's good that a bureaucrat is like
deciding how many dogs someone can have.
But I'm a big fan of nuisance laws.
(16:02):
And I think it's annoying and frustrating that they're not
enforced better because, you know, you see people that have
one dog that's obnoxious and, you know, annoys the whole
neighborhood and you can have someone else, the four that
aren't a problem. So I think I would rather see
nuisance laws enforced and people getting tickets for like
(16:23):
you have a dog barking for more than a couple minutes, that's an
issue. Your dog shouldn't be barking
for minutes at a time in a neighborhood.
And I think every listener knowsand everyone deals with that.
It's those are like, I don't know anywhere that seems to
actually enforce them. I feel like they don't enforce
anything to the dog bite somebody.
So that's. What about people getting in
(16:45):
trouble for that kind of thing? So I have one client that really
comes to mind for this where I think I want to say it was a six
dog household and the limit for their town was three dogs.
And when they had me come out, they must have asked me 20 times
if I was going to report them. Like they thought like I was a
(17:07):
mandatory reporter of the numberof dogs that they had.
And they were so freaked out andworried about it.
And I'm like, I don't really care that you have 6 dogs.
Like I'm not going to go to your, to your police station and
be like, hey, go to this address.
Look how many dogs they have. I've but I've never heard of
anyone get in trouble for breaking one of these
ordinances. It doesn't seem like it's
(17:29):
applied until there's neglect, right?
And they, you know, animal control gets called and someone
has 20 dogs. But you know what kills me about
those stories all pretty much always is.
There were lots of calls leadingup to it.
It's not like there's one call made, animal control shows up
and like fixes, you know, takes the dogs away.
Feel like generally it's call after call after call and then
(17:53):
finally they go and, you know, find out it's horrific
conditions. So I would love to see nuisance
laws enforced more and less worry about number of dogs.
So you're saying that the numberof dogs ordinance wouldn't be a
nuisance law, You're separating those?
(18:15):
I'm separating those. Yeah.
To me, the nuisance law would bewhen you're creating a nuisance
through noise, smell, whatever you know with the you know with
in the neighborhood as opposed to just an ordinance on the
number of dogs. That's interesting.
When you were talking about the nuisance laws, I was thinking
you were combining number of dogs as a nuisance law.
(18:35):
So. No.
So for the record, I was not, I,I think that generally speaking,
those laws, not only are they not really enforced, but if, if
they're not a nuisance and they're not causing any trouble
and there's no allegations of trouble, then who cares if you
have four or five dogs? OK, so I think one of the most
(18:57):
common situations where a personconsiders getting another dog is
when they already have one and they feel like that dog is bored
and needs a friend for company because it's just, you know,
seems lonely sort of. Is there anything to that?
You've already touched on this alittle bit, but is there
(19:18):
anything to that? And is that a smart decision or
a good reason to get that seconddog?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great reason to get a second dog
if you like the behavior of yourfirst dog.
So most dogs are in my opinion are going to be happier with
another dog in the household. So if your first dog is good, I
(19:39):
would, I think in a second one is great.
And obviously, you know, if lostsick, we deal with this with
clients a lot where and you know, I'm dealing with that
right now with a Frenchie that I'm working with that has some,
you know, serious behavioral issues that we're making a ton
of progress. And I think that dog, having a
dog buddy long term is going to be good and is going to
alleviate lots of stress and give the dog an outlet and it's
(20:01):
going to be a great thing. But not until we get that first
dog to quit biting people, you know, because you've got to fix
that first. Otherwise you're trying to house
break a dog and stop your dog from biting someone that's, you
know, not very workable. But overall, I'm a big believer
2 dogs are going to be happier. Just like with kids, I think
generally speaking, two kids aregoing to have more fun together
(20:23):
than one kid sitting on the couch by himself.
OK. And I think that's a really
important factor there, right? So if one dog is already with
you and showing bad behaviors, don't get that second dog yet.
Address those things first. The second dog is not just going
to or second or third dog, right?
If you have two dogs that are already having issues, don't get
(20:45):
a third dog thinking that that third dog is somehow going to
fix the other two. Yes, it's not going to do that.
And then are there, do you have questions about finances or
money? That's that's the next question
is gonna be, well, it's actuallyreally the next consideration
that I feel like we haven't talked about.
(21:05):
Yeah, is just how much dogs costand it can be expensive to have
them. I don't think a lot of people
think about that when they're thinking about getting a dog.
So what do you wanna talk about with that?
I mean, I was just going to throw out, I've seen clients
make this mistake, right, where they get another dog and they
look at her like the other dogs,not that expensive, like to buy
the dog, right? But they're not thinking about
(21:27):
vet care. They're not thinking about now
when you board your dog. Now all of a sudden, when my
dog, one dog used to go with me on a lot of trips, two dogs are
not. Now you're boarding both dogs.
And now if you're training them both, those costs go up.
It just gets expensive and I getit when people have one dog and
(21:47):
they think I bet he'd like a playmate, but I don't know if I
want to commit to that, that ongoing cost and I I get that
completely. So I just wanted to flag that
because we hadn't talked money at all yet.
And there's a lot of times wherelike, I don't shame people like
you should get another dog, a playmate for this one.
You know, that's the decision you need to make yourself.
(22:08):
And if you were to say like, I kind of want one, but
financially I don't think it makes sense.
That's a great it's a great thought to have.
And you don't want to get another dog and then realize now
all of a sudden you can't feed them the food you want to and
get them trained and boredom. Yeah, there's definitely a lot
of expenses. I think vet bills probably end
(22:30):
up being the biggest additional expenses.
You keep adding dogs. Yeah, But the one that really
shocked me when I first got a second dog was boarding fees.
Yeah, it makes going on vacationcost so much more when you have
to board two dogs together and then pay for your trip like that
was. I just remember that being like
(22:51):
a huge shock to me how much thatended up costing.
Yeah, it adds up in a hurry. And that's where so much comes
down to the lifestyle. Because if you said the dogs, I
have a friendly dog, I'm going to get another one and socialize
and train it so it's friendly. And I have a neighbor kid who
will come over here five times aday when I'm on vacation, and
then the dogs can play in the backyard.
(23:12):
Then, you know, second dog couldactually help things.
And I know for us, when we leaveour dogs, we feel better leaving
2 versus 1 because they get to do dog stuff and wrestle and
have fun and they're not by themselves.
So, so I think this is a really big factor though for people
thinking about getting lots of dogs.
So, you know, boarding fees for two dogs is a lot boarding fees
(23:35):
for three dogs, four dogs, five dogs, right?
Those costs are just astronomical at that point.
So what it leads to a lot of people doing is then just not
taking a trip and feeling like they're stuck at home because of
their dogs, right. And if if you're the type of
person, and we talked about thisa little bit earlier, if you
want to travel, you don't have to just be the type of person
(23:56):
who's living in a van. If you want to travel, having
five dogs is going to make it really difficult for you to take
5 trips in a year, right? I mean, those costs are just
going to add up like crazy. 100%.
Jumping back to to sort of a more positive point of it, and I
think you've already touched on this a little bit as well.
(24:19):
When you get a second dog or a third dog, you've already
learned a ton from your first oryour second dog, right?
So whether it be about training or just vet care or having a dog
in your house, the second or thethird dog is generally way
easier, right? Because you already know things
that you didn't know when you had the first dog.
(24:41):
So that's one of the huge pointsI have here is, you know, you've
already gained the knowledge of having a dog, so now it's a lot
easier to add additional dogs from there.
Yeah, I would agree with that statement.
You're more experient, no matterhow many dogs you've had in the
past, you're now just by logic or definition more experienced
(25:02):
because of the last dog or the current dog that you have.
So in theory, you're you know, better at raising dogs and then
it's worth throwing out to people.
That's easier to house break a dog, a puppy when you have
another dog in the household because that you let the other
older dog go out, the puppy is going to most likely follow them
in the yard, excited to see whatthey're doing.
That other dog pees the puppies more likely to just squat and
(25:25):
pee right there. So house breaking your second
dog is usually way easier because you have more experience
and your your older dog already makes the yard smell like pee
and there's you know, it makes sense to the puppy where to go.
So that makes things quite a biteasier.
So I know you're not going to believe this, but we've gone
(25:46):
through all the the topics on mylist.
So what more would you like to cover about multiple dogs?
When it makes sense to get another dog, That type of thing.
I would definitely like to talk about the sex of the dog.
So we get this question a lot. And I think it might be because
(26:08):
we're called in and a lot of aggression cases.
So people that have an aggressive dog fighting and
biting and that's on their mind.So they ask like what what breed
is more likely, I'm sorry, not what breed, what sex is more
likely to be aggressive or not? And you know, you hear all these
things, right? Like people say like, oh, man,
(26:28):
females, you have two females. If they get to fighting, oh,
it's so much worse than males. But then you have others that
say the opposite. And in my experience, people let
their previous experiences colortheir opinion too much.
Even some newer trainers who've been at this maybe a couple
years or so where they're like, oh man, 2 males.
(26:50):
It's just so different if you have two intact males that start
fighting, but they're basing that on a client they had a year
ago that was their worst aggression case ever.
And it was 2 male Roths and it was horrendous.
And so that sticks out on their mind.
But then you talk to another trainer who's like, no females
man. You get some females in the
house that don't like each other, but they're thinking of
(27:10):
the two female Kane Corso's theyhad five years ago.
That was their worst aggression case ever and I can tell you
from my experience having done this for so long, it doesn't.
In my opinion it doesn't seem tomatter as far as like our
opposite sex maps. So a male and a female in my
opinion are way less likely to fight each other than two males
(27:32):
or two females. But are two males harder to have
or two females? Honestly I don't see enough of a
difference after doing. I've been doing this since 2006.
I, I can't look at what I've seen through life and say, oh
man, there's a big difference because in my opinion there is
not. It does make a difference
(27:52):
though. If you have one dog and you're
getting a second, I would get the opposite sex for sure.
So you have 1 male get a female.No, that's a no brainer.
And then if you're getting a third dog, well obviously you
know, there's just two choices and you're like, well, I have a
male, I have a female. What do I get for the third one?
And the way I explain that to a client is if I know they're
(28:13):
dogs, I'll just tell them you look at your two dogs, which one
is the least likely to ever fight and get another one of
that sex. So if your female dog's pretty
high strung and she's kind of bossy to the male and the male's
this like dopey gentle giant, I'd probably get a your third
dog would be a male. And then the opposite.
If you've got a male who like pushes other male dogs around
(28:36):
and a really sweet, silly femaledog, then for sure I'd get a
female. If both of your dogs, if you're
like, I don't know, they're bothkind of jerks.
I would think really hard about getting a third dog.
You might be, you know, kind of ruining your peaceful household
at that point. And if they're both just happy
go lucky easy dogs, then who cares?
Get 1/3 of what whatever sex. And maybe if you're if you're
(28:58):
getting, whether you're rescuingor buying a dog, you just could
just evaluate, right. And go into it saying I don't
care what sex this dog is, I just want to find a happy dog
that fits with my lifestyle and you pick the one that makes the
most sense. Yeah, I think that's really
great advice. I wish more people would follow.
I feel like most people just seea dog fall in love with it and
(29:21):
get it regardless of gender, age, issues that already exist
in their household. Yeah, I would say I'm a big
believer in spay and neuter and I feel like for a while, you
know, like that whole like push of spay and neuter to not have
(29:41):
more puppies in the world, like that's that's good, right?
I'm not opposed to that push, but I feel like behavioral stuff
wasn't talked about there. So then people are like, well,
I'm not going to let my dog get loose and go knock up the
neighbor dog. So it doesn't really matter, but
it does matter and it is going to affect your dog's behavior.
I think it's nuts to not spay and neuter dogs.
(30:03):
I think that's just absolutely asinine in, you know, think it
through. And I we've talked about this in
previous episodes. I don't believe in spaying and
neutering young. So I'm not saying you should
like get a puppy and spay it at,you know, 12 weeks or 8 weeks.
I wouldn't do that I believe andlet him go through a cycle 1st
and then spaying them and then amale dog waiting as long as you
(30:23):
can before they start kind of showing tendencies you don't
like, like more marking, you know, mounting other dogs,
things like that. So not a fan of doing it young,
but I think it should be done. And that is, in my opinion,
going to decrease the risks of dog on dog aggression in the
house, regardless of what you read on the Internet.
(30:44):
Because I don't know if you did research for this philosopher,
if you've seen the same thing. But I've seen studies that show
the most likely dog to bite is aspayed female.
And I've had a client tell me before, like, well, I don't want
to get her spayed because I did the research and a spayed female
is the most likely dog to bite. Like I, I don't know, like I'd
be curious to read that study. Like I've seen that quoted
(31:07):
online, but like, where did you choose these dogs from?
And like, I just have so many questions.
I've never seen that actually. Yeah, and we talked about it
when we had a, you know, a vet on the episode a few months
back. Not, not as far as biting, but
just like, you know, there's studies that'll say, you know,
(31:28):
not spaying your female dog is actually better because of, you
know, this risk or whatever. There's studies that show
everything. But overall, I, I think without
a doubt, I would get, you know, all your dogs spayed and
neutered. You're going to, I think overall
healthier dogs and for sure lesslikely to have aggression
issues. But just know it's not a magic
fix. You're not going to neuter your
(31:50):
dog and like, wow, now he's a good boy.
We neutered them and like, everything's great.
Like that's not that's not how it works, but it will make
things easier to fix. Yeah, I agree completely.
I think spayed, neutered Zoe's going to make the most sense for
a female dog. I just like wouldn't want to
deal with the diapers and stuff every month.
So that alone is probably going to get me to do that.
(32:13):
I can. I can understand that for sure.
And you know, that usually the people that are really, really
up in arms about waiting and arelike angry if you'd spay or
neuter too soon are breeders andthey're like freaking out if you
do it too soon. That's usually I feel like
you're like, well, you know, whatever, do it before it's too
(32:36):
late, you know, seem less worried about it.
And then rescues are like spaying and neutering dogs at 8
weeks a lot of times. Yeah.
And for me, the only time that Isee clients that really don't do
it is just if they say they're thinking about breeding the dog.
But I'd also throw out that I feel like most of those people
don't ever go through with that.So I feel like almost leave that
(32:59):
to breeders, right? And then just get your dog
fixed. Yeah, that's a whole, whole
nother subject. But my opinion would be if
you're not strategically trying to better the breed, then you
shouldn't be breeding dogs. And if your goal is like you're
you're educating yourself and you have a plan to better the
(33:21):
breed, then it like someone's got to be a breeder.
So I'm not anti breeder by any stretch, but when you're like, I
don't know, he's a good looking dog.
I feel like I should breed them.To me, that's kind of silly.
And, you know, maybe you talk toa breeder and if they evaluate
the dog and want the dog, you know, as a stud, maybe that does
(33:42):
make sense. But to breed them yourself, I
think it's usually not not ideal.
But I agree with you all the time.
We deal with clients who say I'mthinking about breeding and it
just seems like they never ever do.
Yeah, for sure. So what else do you have?
Number of dogs. I don't know if I have anything
else. I mean, we covered all the big
(34:03):
things I would talk about with aclient.
And I think maybe a closing thing would be don't ruin your
peaceful household. If you've got two dogs that are
like I mentioned this a minute ago, that are kind of high
strung, but they get along well and somehow suit each other, you
have to really think carefully. Do you want to bring a third dog
(34:24):
into the mix and all of a suddenhave a problem?
SO2 high strung dogs. I don't think getting a third
dog is a very, very wise choice at that point.
Yeah. And then definitely the flip
side of that, if you have a household that's already
absolutely crazy, don't bring ina third dog to try and fix the
absolute craziness. Yes.
(34:46):
That's not going to fix it. Agreed.
And our multi dog households pretty much always, like I said
earlier, have aggression. I shouldn't say multi.
Our five dog household clients pretty much always have
aggression issues. And like I said, I can't think
of a time that I've been to a house with five dogs that didn't
have that. So why you know, just hearing
(35:07):
those statistics like why would you want to take that risk?
It would be my opinion and thinking through how was this
third dog or 4th or 5th going tomake your life better and the
life of your other dogs better? And then you get to that point
where you're not walking them and or you're walking in shifts
so that you don't walk very longbecause it's not fun and you've
(35:31):
got two other shifts of walking to do and then the dogs aren't
getting what they need. Even just taking them out or
putting them out in the yard to go to the bathroom, doing that
and shifts at all, it becomes a lot of work feeding them and
shifts. And feeding five dogs is, for
most people, turns into a littlebit of a chore.
(35:53):
Guess I'd say a lot of bit of a chore.
Yeah, and if you're lucky and they don't have any food
allergies and they can all eat the same food, that helps.
And if you've raised him properly and you don't have
fighting between them, that helps.
But when we're called in with five dogs, there's, you said it
earlier, there's always shifts. And like these two in here, this
one eats by himself and these two, you know, can be over here.
(36:15):
And that is, that's a hard life.All right.
Well, did we cover it? Did we do it all?
I think we did it. OK, good topic.
I hope this is helpful to peopleand if we convince one person
with two dogs to not get a thirdand then just enjoy their life,
I think I think we did somethingtoday.
Yeah, for sure. All right.
(36:36):
Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks everyone.
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