So I babysat my mother in law's 2 year old maltese dog this Saturday. My wife and I have been considering getting a dog for about a year now and I was hoping this would be a good way to see if we would like getting one. I didn't...
Before I explain why I didn't like the experience, I have to give the caveat that my mother in law is not a really an experienced dog owner. Their family is fairly low income and though one of them is always home to take care of the dog, they haven't spent any money on obedience training, didn't crate train the dog, and haven't really taught him how to go on walks or socialized him. I understand their situation and don't really blame them or anything, but it does make me wonder about my time with him.
Overall I didn't really like having her dog around, we took him for 3 walks throughout the day but he still had a lot of energy and was constantly trying to get our attention while we unwinding that night and watching netflix. His version of getting our attention involves putting his front paws on what we're sitting on or our legs and scratching at it l until we look at him or tell us to stop. It was a honestly very annoying.
Since he doesn't know basic commands, we were constantly wary that he might eat something he shouldn't. At one point he found a unopened small plastic bag of screws and we had to coax him to drop the bag since he doesn't know what we mean when we say drop.
When we were taking him out for his first walk, his leash was set too loose and he pulled himself free before we got to the elevator and we had to chase him down. Which was exacerbated by the fact that there was a dog in a neighboring apartment and he was more interested in barking to that dog than coming back into our place.
Since he isn't crate trained, we tried just leaving him out in the living room while we slept in the bedroom but he kept scratching at the door and pushing his paws into making a lot of noise. My wife ended up relenting and letting him sleep in our room. I had a terrible night of sleep partially because it was my first time having a dog in our bed and I was constantly paranoid he was going to wander around our bedroom and eat something he shouldn't or get onto our bed and try to get us to wake up.
So having said all that, I will say he definitely likes my wife more since she's seen him on more occasions while visiting her mom and she was the one that took him on a walk before coming to our place. I get the feeling he just thinks I'm there.
Thanks for reading all this everyone! Do you guys think I am just not cut out for a dog given all the things I annoyed me? Or is my mother in law's dog just a special case.
Tl;dr Babysat mother in law's dog. Dog is not very well trained and I didn't really like having him for the weekend.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/dl2ifp/babysat_mother_in_laws_dog_am_i_not_cut_out_to_be/
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