Before we brought Sweet Baby L home, a whole bunch of worries swirled around in my head. Things like: Would she miss her dog family?  Would she be happy with us? Would we be able to train her? How hard, really, would potty-training be?  Would she like the toys we’d already gotten for her?

Since then, I’ve been surprised by the things I actually needed to worry about and the ones that I thought I did. Here are the top five things that I didn’t think about before getting a dog. 

Trash

We live in the city, and I never really noticed just how much trash is lying around until I started walking Sweet Baby L.  When she was very young, she’d try to lunge at things she shouldn’t all the time. Part of being a puppy is exploring the world, it just so happens dogs like to do that with their noses and mouths. It felt like every walk around the block was a minefield of dangerous things. Bottle tops, chicken bones, corks, plastic bags, etc etc. We’ve worked a lot on her “out” command so now she’s very good at spitting out the things that she shouldn’t have in her mouth in the first place, but she’s 

Poo Bags

You can never have too many. I can remember the first time I was out with Sweet Baby L and she went once, then went again. I stood there, staring down at the sidewalk wondering how I was gonna clean it up. I couldn’t just leave it there, but I’d already used the poo bag I’d brought with me and all I had in my pocket was my keys and my phone. Luckily, we live in a neighborhood that’s full of pups and it wasn’t that long until another dog owner came by and offered me an extra. Lesson learned. Never leave the house without at least two, maybe three bags. You never know. 

Allergies 

I grew up with a Golden Retriever and never had any issues with allergies, but the thought that I might have developed an allergy in adulthood did cross my mind. What would happen if my husband or I was allergic to all her fur? 

It never occurred to me that she might have allergies of her own. I didn’t even know that dogs could have allergies, to be honest. But when she was just a few months old, I started noticing that she was scratching a lot. Like, a lot. We changed her diet up, thinking the itching might be related to her food.  Nothing changed. She started chewing and licking her paws a lot. The vet recommended some more robust tests and it turns out that Sweet Baby L is allergic to a lot of environmental allergens (grass, dust, mold, etc). She’s on immunotherapy shots to help her body adjust, though they do take a long time to have an effect (up to a year). 

Hot Spots

I’ll never forget the moment we noticed the hot spot on Sweet Baby L’s neck. We were in the park with a new dog trainer when my husband reached down to scratch under her muzzle. He pulled his hand away, feeling something wet on her fur. Pus. Closer inspection revealed what appeared to be a massive wound on her neck. Cue all the panic. What had happened? How had we not noticed? She didn’t seem to be in any major distress, so what was going on?? Was she in a lot of pain? How could she not be? We abandoned our training session, piled into an Uber and sped off to the nearest emergency clinic. When we arrived, the nurse that helped us into triage looked down, shrugged and said, “Oh. A hotspot.”  

Apparently they are quite common and for the most part, easily treatable. In Sweet Baby L’s case, the vet thought it might have developed after her being out in the rain and going to sleep in her crate without fully drying off. They shaved her fur, cleaned the wound, and sent us home with instructions to keep it clean, with medicated wipes and a cone.  It took about ten days for her to fully recover, and since then, I’m extra vigilant about making sure to dry her off anytime she has a bath or has to go out in bad weather. 

Emergency Vet Hours

We’ve now taken many trips to the emergency vet, usually when Sweet Baby L has been up all night with diarrhea and/or vomiting.  When Sweet Baby L seemed like she was in a lot of pain in the middle of the night, I called the clinic closest to us, only to learn that they weren’t going to be open for another six hours.  I was really surprised by the number of emergency places that aren’t actually open 24 hours a day.  Since then, we’ve had a new option open near us that actually does operate 24/7, which is a huge relief.