There are things to consider when picking either a male or female dog that will depend upon your preferences. Also do you want a family pet or a show dog? The size of dog is also another big consideration – small dogs do not necessary require a big space but they do need more exercise than bigger breeds.

Then you also need to decide if you want to get a purebred, a crossbreed, or a random breed and will you get your new dog from a local shelter or a dog breeder. Lastly, if you choose to go with a dog breeder, be sure and do your research to make sure that you are getting your new dog from a very good source.

Should I get an Adult Dog or a new Puppy?

One of the biggest advantages to getting an adult dog is that it is usually potty trained and the owner can tell you about his or her characteristics and habits. Also you can see the dog’s final size without guessing. Many dogs are either smaller or larger than the owner initially expected.

Although the dog acts friendly around you, it is still possible that he has some hidden behavioral problems such as chewing or barking. If you are considering an adult dog, try a small test in to evaluate more about its temperament and personality firsthand Closely observe the dog’s behavior as you approach him whether he is just lying around or eating a bowl of food. This is a big consideration if you have small children in the house. A dog should never growl when he is eating, even if disturbed by a child. Then try walking him past another dog or a child that he has not met before so you can see his reaction.

Puppies on the other hand are still at an impressionable and primary learning stage of life, there will be a lot of guess work involved until he develops his personality. You may notice a difference in behavior of a 10 week old puppy from the rest of its litter. Each one will have its own distinct personality – some puppies are more hyper than others while some are docile. The timid one usually clings to their mother or may cower in corner, while the outgoing one would march toward you in confidence. These are two examples of temperament difference within the litter.

Should you pick a male or a female dog breed?

Prior to any dog reaching puberty, there are six differences between the male and female behavior. Male puppies have masculine brains due to a surge of testosterone hormone right before birth. Female dogs are usually neutral in behavior until puberty. Many families feel that a female dog will be more nurturing and mother like with small children while a male dog will be more protective.

There are some notable differences in behavior between female and male breeds. Males are usually more likely to be dominant over their owners and act in an aggressive manner over other dogs. They are generally more active and more likely to protect their territories. Male dogs are also known to urine mark their territories and to wander. They tend to be more destructive, more playful, and are more likely snappy with kids. Keep in mind this is not all male dogs, but some so it will depend on the other pets and ages of any children in the home.

Females on the other hand are easier to house train and obedience train. They also usually require more love and affection from their owners. They have two heat cycles twice a year that comes with blood–tinged discharges that last about one week. A dog in heat can be problematic for you, if you don’t plan to have any puppies; you should definitely consider having her spayed. Not only will it keep her safe from puppies you most likely don’t want but it’s good for her health as well.

There are no differences between males and females when it comes to defensive barking, nervous barking, or excitability, this will actually be determined more by age and breed. Neutering or spaying your dog will reduce and even eliminate many of these behavioral differences.

These are just a few things to consider, obviously there are many more factors to consider when choosing a suitable dog but we have covered the major ones today. It is important to carefully look into every aspect of making the best choice before you get your new family pet family.

Naturally, animal lovers like to have more than one dog around and often several breeds or other species. Ensuring that chairs remain upright and necks unbitten can be a real challenge. Add to the mix the neighbor’s pets or random critters who wander into your companion’s territory and your furniture, not to mention your sanity, can be at real risk.

The first step is to start the process of socializing your dog as early as possible. Like children, puppies are much more accepting of strangers. They haven’t yet distinguished between friend and foe and everything is a new experience to be explored rather than feared or chased.

If you have only one dog, expose the puppy early on to other dogs and people. Get them used to being touched, especially between the toes, in the ears and near the eyes. Apart from impact on interaction with animals, that will make vet visits and trips to the store a lot easier.

Dogs, of course, sniff everything. When they’re about to interact with another, control them until you’re confident there won’t be chasing or violence, then let them explore the other dog, cat or creature.

If the dog shows a tendency to leap or bite, tolerate it to the point someone is going to get injured. It’s normal for dogs to rough house, knock one another over and even lightly bite legs and necks. Stay close and be prepared to snatch them away, if necessary. Leather gloves may be useful during the initial experiments.

If they continually bark, distract them with a treat, a toy or a sharp command. If they refuse to cease pulling or barking after several attempts at control, try another day. What works will vary widely depending on the individual dog and some will simply never tolerate others. You’ll discover what’s more and less effective as you observe their interactions over time.

It may be necessary to put the dog on it’s back, then hold it down with a firm hand on the chest. In harder cases a bark or shout in the dog’s face is useful. Yes, you will look like a lunatic to others, but this technique is even employed by the Monks of New Skeet. The brothers of this upper New York State religious order are world-renown for their German Shepherd raising practices.

Rescued or animal shelter dogs can require extra patience when socializing. These animals have often been abused by people or injured by other dogs. Those experiences naturally often lead to aggression or fear. Remarkable transformations have been seen even in these dogs, though. After repeated exposure they often learn to at least tolerate other people and pets.

Start early, expose for short intervals leading to longer ones, repeat as needed. In every case, be prepared to physically and mentally control the dog.

Some studies suggest that number of dog breeds reaches as high as 800 in Western countries alone. Taking into account that distinguishing one breed from another can be carried to ridiculous extremes.

Complicating the picture still further is the well-known fact that dogs have descended from wolves but began domestic interaction with humans over 10,000 years ago. As a consequence, there are behaviors that develop regardless of circumstances and some that are as unique as the human the dog is paired with. Still, some common traits stand out.

Dogs are predators

That doesn’t mean they necessarily hunt and attack every passing cat or rat, but the capacity is always in them. With acute hearing and head muscles that allow precise orientation of their ears, dogs can pick up a range of sounds and locate the source quickly and with high accuracy.

A dog’s field of vision is higher than that of humans. Their field of view has been estimated from 180-270 degrees, by comparison to a human’s 100-150 degrees, allowing them to track events better.

And, of course, there’s that famous sense of smell. Citing figures such as having 25 times as many scent-receptor cells or being able to sense concentrations 100 million times smaller than humans conveys the fact one way.

Another is to report behavior. Golden Retrievers, for example, can smell gophers through two feet of packed snow and a foot of frozen earth. And, they’ll dig through it to get to the gopher. That’s predatory behavior.

Dogs are social animals

That’s common knowledge, of course. But, though known, it’s often ignored. Individuals will often lock a lone dog away in a garage or pen, or on a rope in the yard for long periods. This isolation from contact with humans and other animals invariably leads to fear and/or aggression and other forms of maladjustment. Dogs need companionship in order to develop healthy behavior.

Isolating a dog for brief periods can be a useful training technique. Fear of expulsion from the pack can be an incentive for keeping overly assertive, alpha-status seeking dogs in alignment with the trainer’s goals. In any human-dog pair, the human must be the alpha (leader). The alternative is property destruction, human frustration and unsafe conditions for people and dogs.

But excessive time devoid of social interaction with another dog, the human, or even a friendly cat harms the dog’s psychology and leads to unwanted behavior. Even guard dogs have to be able to distinguish between external ‘threats’ and members of its own ‘pack’.

Dogs are exploratory

Like the two-year-old humans at roughly their same mental level, dogs learn by exploring their environment. And like those humans, they can engage in destructive behavior. Dogs are no respecters of property. Training and an appropriately selected set of objects and suitable area can channel that behavior into something acceptable to humans and healthy for the dog.

Providing toys with characteristics very distinct from human property, such as rawhide bones rather than rubber balls that are hard to tell from children’s, leads to less confusion and misbehavior. In many cases, however, the problem is solved by scent. The dog’s toys may look like the child’s, but smell very different.

Some amount of digging may be inevitable as part of the dog’s exploration. Be prepared to patch holes in lawn if the dog is unsupervised for very long. Plants can usually be protected with cayenne pepper paste, bitter apple and other preparations.

Dogs are scavengers

Dogs will eat deer droppings, even when they have perfectly sound and ample diets. They’ll chew on dead rats, eat grass and ingest a wide variety of things that their own experience shows causes upset stomachs. And they’ll repeat the behavior day after day.

Acknowledging their limited ability to connect cause and effect when those are separated in time is a must in order to keep them healthy and safe.

Recognizing a dog’s nature, and working within in it rather than against it leads to less frustration for both human and dog. Enjoying the beneficial aspects, such as spontaneous dog hugs (leaning into a leg), paw offering and a head laid on the lap are just a few of the rewards.

One of the reasons for the association between humans and dogs is the latter’s great capacity for communicating in terms the former can understand. How often has your canine companion delivered a tennis ball with a look that you unerringly interpret as ‘time for fetch’?

These are only two examples out of many that show dogs have a great capacity for learning complex behavior.

Dogs can understand a surprising amount of language and body posture, but they process information very differently from humans.

Their eyes respond very differently to colors and have a greater ability to see in low light. Their head muscles allow them to rotate their ears in order to quickly and accurately locate the precise source of sounds. And, of course, there’s that famous sense of smell.

The differences continue on other levels of mental functioning. Dogs understand cause-effect relationships very unlike their human companions.

Classical conditioning – associating a stimulus with a response – can be much more readily surmounted in humans. Humans are much better at changing an undesired response to a car accident or a trip to the doctor. Those associations are much more persistent in dogs.

Operant conditioning – grasping naturally related cause-effect relationships, usually through positive and negative reinforcement – is even more different between the two species.

I always exit the rear door with my Golden Retrievers when we’re going to play fetch. When I do, we invariably do actually play. By contrast, a hundred times I let them out the side door, where I never follow them. Instead, I leave them alone for half an hour or more. Yet they still go immediately to the back door where they expect a game to follow.

I clearly associated a specific tone and word and a unique hand gesture with every command. In consequence, they learn a wide variety of selected behaviors. They can sit, stay, down, come, roll-over, no-bite, fetch and release, even eliminate on command.

Yet telling them repeatedly not to eat things off the ground that their own experience continually shows them leads to upset stomachs is a waste of effort. They’ll repeat the same unwanted behavior the first time they can. They simply can’t grasp some effects when the cause is much earlier in time.

The lesson from these examples is this. Your companion, whether Retriever or Shepherd, Dachshund or Basset Hound can learn an astounding variety of things, provided you don’t expect the unreasonable.

One woman well-known on the show circuit has trained her friend to perform a complex, several-minutes long dance routine. Search-and-rescue dogs have been trained to pull children from rivers and skiers from avalanches. Service dogs can open a door and pull a wheelchair or fetch a container of water without spilling a drop.

But don’t expect them to think like humans, even when trained to emulate us. No matter how many times you tell them not to, they’ll continue to eat grass.

First and foremost you need to have your dog’s measurements. You definitely don’t want to build a dog house to find out after the fact that your dog doesn’t fit comfortably! Be sure to take various different measurements with your dog standing tall, laying down and sitting up. With proper measurements you will be able to build a dog house he can enjoy and hang out in. After you have your basic measurements, you should add at least 4 to 5 inches more for extra space.

Next, you need to figure out how much wood you will need to build your dog house. For the frame, two by fours work best. You will need:

Now you need wood siding to cover the entire structure of the dog house. Treated wood is a good choice for the frame pieces. Thick plywood is a better choice for the floor, sidewalls and the roof. It can be measured and cut before hand and then applied in one piece so that it’s easier to work with.

Shingles are needed for the roof for prevention from rain or snow depending on the climate in your area.

Paint, stain and even aluminum siding (to match your house) are also common choices but the decision is yours depending on how much detail you want to build into your dog house. There are many different dog house designs, just have an idea of what you want it to look like prior to buying all the materials!

If you want to design the look and feel of your dog house but you want a foundation to start with you can also purchase an unfinished dog house and stain it to your liking.