All About The Boy
boys vs girls, Getting a Third Dog and Everything In-between
In 2022, we welcomed our first male whippet to the family and what a journey it’s been. There has been certainly some points in the last three years where I’ve really doubted my choice but here’s a little more all about our boy and the journey we’ve had together.
As we’ve just celebrated Ralph’s third birthday I thought it was about time that I finally wrote the post that has sat in my drafts for almost two years and boy do I have a lot to say. Getting Ralph was quite the whirlwind and we certainly said goodbye to the nice and relaxed existence that we had when it was just the girls. The last few years haven’t been exactly what I thought they would be when we decided to add another dog to our family but it’s just another reminder that you can do all the right things and still don’t always end up the way you’d hoped.
boys vs girls
Honestly, I’ve never really wanted a male dog in my life and I couldn’t give you a real reason why either. Then the more I spent around other whippets, my best friend getting a boy dog and the amount of times I was told that the boys were so much easier to train and so much more loving I began to think differently. So when it came to getting another dog I was pretty set on the next whippet that came into our lives would be a boy and spoiler alert, absolutely none of the things that I was told for years have turned out to be true whatsoever so it’s a good reminder that all dogs are different. Whilst, I think Ralph is a wonderful boy and I love him dearly after our experience having a male dog I don’t think we’ll own another for quite a long time. In comparison, to Josie and Edie, we’ve found that Ralph has been painfully slow to mature and becomes so easily overstimulated as well as tending to be destructive in the house which are behaviours I’ve never encountered before. It’s been a huge learning curve getting used to his tendencies and there are still things he does now that throw us for a loop.
the reality of owning 3 dogs
This is a question that comes up fairly often online and in real life and there are a couple of real drawbacks I’ve found to owning three dogs. The first is the cost, the price of dog ownership is something that has skyrocketed in the last few years and each year I dread my pet insurance renewal and food is increasing all the time. So that’s probably the biggest factor that comes into play I think when it comes to owning another dog, because it’s not just about that initial cost that you have to prepare for it’s everything they need on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Whilst investing in good quality dog products can cut down on a lot of repurchases some costs absolutely can’t be avoided like insurance, vet visits and food.
The second is how you’re managing all three dogs’ needs because that can often be challenging. If you’re going to get a puppy and already have an existing dog it’s so important to think about how you’re still going to make sure your older dog is getting all its needs met whilst you have to teach the new dog everything from scratch. We purchased a cheap puppy sling for Ralph off Amazon so that he could still come on walks with the girls when he was unable to go on the floor yet and that was perfect for us as it meant their walks didn’t get cut short. There are almost 5 years between Ralph the youngest and Josie our first and eldest dog and whilst you might not think that is a big age gap they require very different things. Ralph wants to run around like a maniac on nearly all his walks whilst Josie and Edie don’t these days so we’ve had to adjust our walks to meet everyone's needs and make sure that everyone is getting what they want from a walk.
Ralph & his reactivity journey
Getting a puppy and having what I considered a good bank of dog knowledge I thought that I would have the best-behaved dog in the world (yes you can all roll your eyes like I am right now). I’d learnt so much from the girls that I thought what could this dog throw at me that we hadn’t already had to work around and manage? Well, turns out a dog who has no interest in other dogs, the Covid puppy epidemic and the rise of absolutely terrible dog owners was a series of terrible events for Ralph. I was so conscious of trying to train him to be dog-neutral and naturally he was, he wasn’t interested in dogs at all as he liked to stand back and observe a situation rather than being front and centre. This was great for us, until out-of-control dogs wouldn’t leave us alone and in those crucial weeks of puppy socialisation it’s something that can have a long-lasting† and damaging effect on a young dog and not so surprisingly it’s led to Ralph being pretty reactive. Sometimes it’s lead frustration but more often than not it’s pure fear when a dog rushes up to him and he has no time to process the situation which he’s shown us from day one that he needs. There have been some real stand-out interactions that I know have set back Ralph a considerable amount and it’s been pretty upsetting to deal with especially when other owners don’t seem to care at all.
Something I wasn’t expecting when my dad suddenly passed away at the end of last year was that things with Ralph's behaviour on walks would go from bad to worse. Any walk we would go on and almost any dog we would encounter he would be barking, snarling and acting like I’d never seen him before. At first, I chalked it up to a massive change in our routine and all the upheaval at home but as the weeks went on and the dust started to settle he was only getting worse. It’s a given that I wasn’t feeling my best and whilst I was trying my hardest to put my best foot forward on walks and not let my mood transfer to the dogs too much it got to the point where it was completely unmanageable and I didn’t feel able to walk all three by myself.
A year later I’m able to say we’ve made some progress, a course of behaviour medication made the world of difference for us and Ralph and put us in a much better position to train him but it’s probably been the most difficult thing that we’ve ever had to deal with. Handling a reactive dog has been a huge learning curve for me and I see dog walks in such a different light now, we’ve had to put so many things in place in order and despite there being several set backs we have more positive walks than bad and we’re always working on it.
little things we live by
a multi-way lead is a lifesaver to avoid tangles as much as possible.
there always being access to a crate.
not always having them all off-lead at once.
giving each dog one-on-one time doing something that they enjoy.
treating each dog as an individual and adjusting things around each one.
not forcing them to share anything.
