Age Gaps

My ideal is 3-5 years. Watson will be 2 next summer and I definitely can't imagine adding another just yet. If my dogs were "just pets" 2 years would probably be fine (he's a great pet and mostly calm and well behaved in the house at this point), but I love training and going to classes and seminars with him and I just don't have the time/energy/money to do that with two dogs. Once he is older and more "trained" (like, out of the foundation work and actively trialing in something) and has finished his conformation championship, I'll consider a second. Not sure if I'd ever consider a 3rd, but a 10 year old, 5 year old, and puppy wouldn't be a bad mix.

Welshies are also slow to mature, so that factors in. With a fast maturing breed/dog, my age window might be smaller.

In real life, the biggest factor will be human kids, honestly. I don't want Watson and a youngster when we have a baby, but that might mean that he's 7+ when we're ready to add a puppy, which is older than my ideal.

At this point, so long as I *shouldn't* (ie barring accidents) be losing more than a pet a year, I'm pretty good, at this point.

3 in 14 months way just too much. I'm looking at most likely losing 2 this year. Maybe I'm just grumpy about that still.

There's almost exactly 3 years between Ned and Quinn. I hope to bring a puppy home in 2014 or 2015, which will be 4 or 5 years difference from Quinn. 5 would be my preference if I lived in a dream world where I had absolute say and everything worked out perfectly LOL

After thinking about it some I realized that mine are also all three months apart. So my next puppy will need a February birthday.

Payton is trying to help with that but he's too late.

Today I have taken to asking him "What would you do if we had a puppy?" and he starts looking around. I think he thinks I mean "puppy" as in Auggie's toy and he's trying to find it. Or he vaguely recalls when he had no name and was simply Puppy and thinks he's in a time warp...

I dunno about my ideal age gap.

Quinn will have a 5 year age gap between her and nextdog by the time I get it, Her and Buster are 7 years apart.

From there on in it will just be a "when it is time to get another dog" system. Quinn is just so **** hard I need to make sure I'm well prepped to raise a puppy with her, especially while its young and vulnerable to negative experiences.

I'd probably like between 2 and 4 years between dogs ideally.

Me, too. Even if I try to think about what I would like, it just... doesn't matter that much to me. Pip is 8, Maisy is 5, and Squash is 3, and that's fine for me.

Moving forward with skijoring, I actually don't want too much of a gap. I don't think I would want more than 2-3 years between, so there's always someone relatively mature to help break in a new kid but still young enough to keep up as part of a pair.

I don't care in the slightest, but I wish it had maybe occurred to me I am in for a world of sad if every one lives to a decent old age as they're all pretty close together. Smalls is 7, Jonas is 8, Magpie and Jack are in the ~10 range, Shambles is a little over 3 and Elsa is approximately 4-5.

We're aiming for 4-5 years going forward for a couple of reasons.

1) Old dogs can be expensive. I want to be able to afford acupuncture, and special foods and memory foam beds and house sitters for the oldsters.

2) Competing is expensive and time consuming. So having a puppy that's doing foundational work and a steady regular competitor and a part-time semi-retired dog sounds super nice. That way we don't have to pick and choose what we do with them too much.

Plus we travel to compete and there's only so many dogs you can haul in a mini-van!

Marvel's 3.5 and Gnome is 9 weeks and we'd like to hold out until 2018/2019 for the next dog.