Hit total burnout with an Aussie puppy (5mo) and Husky puppy (2mo) + young kids. Scheduled a surrender/return, but looking for a reality check or last-minute advice.
I am at a complete breaking point and need an objective reality check, or any advice from people who have survived high-drive breeds.
The Setup:
My household is incredibly busy. My husband and I both work full-time from home and we have two very young daughters (a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old).
• Dog 1 (Ashe): A 5-month-old male Australian Shepherd. He is fully housebroken, crate-trained, and in a 1-on-1 setting with me during the workday, he is a total dream dog—velcro, sweet, and focused. He does have a minor overbite and is wrapping up a treatment cycle for worms.
• Dog 2 (Shadow): A 7-week-old Husky puppy that we brought home recently.
The Crisis:
We did not fully anticipate the explosive combination of two high-drive puppies and two toddlers. Ashe is experiencing massive excitement-based reactivity and over-arousal. He doesn't show "mean" aggression, but he is completely relentless with the Husky puppy. They play together well but Ashe doesn’t know when to disengage. If we make him he then barks relentlessly.
Because of this constant state of hyper-fixation, Ashe’s "arousal bucket" stays full. The other night, during a high-energy evening moment with high-pitched praise and physical restraint, Ashe hit his threshold and snapped at me. I know it was redirected arousal due to the chaotic environment, but it terrified me regarding the safety of our kids.
The Family Impact:
To manage them, my husband and I are living a life of "partitions"—constantly separating them, trading off zones of the house, and running ourselves ragged. It has completely stolen our peace.
Worse, my 5-year-old had a meltdown this morning and told me she was crying because "no one is paying attention to me or playing with me because y'all are always busy with the dogs." It broke my heart. I feel like I am failing my kids to run a high-stress canine science experiment.
What We’ve Done So Far:
We are strictly enforcing 2 to 2.5-hour wake/nap windows, though Ashe just had a massive "adrenaline hangover" meltdown where he stayed up for a 3-hour marathon and then barked frantically in his crate because he was so overtired and wired.
Because we hit a wall of total burnout, we made two massive executive decisions today:
- My husband contacted the Husky's breeder, and she agreed to take Shadow back this Sunday.
- I reached out to a breed-specific rescue (ARMA) to initiate an owner surrender for Ashe, offering to foster him until they find an appropriate lower-arousal, Aussie-savvy home without toddlers.
My Dilemma / Question:
Deep down, I know our human family has to come first, but I am drowning in guilt. Ashe is a good dog when the house is quiet, and I know that as he matures over the next 18–24 months, he has the potential to be a GREAT dog.
Is it completely naive of me to think that if we just survive the next 4–6 weeks until the Husky matches him in size, this dynamic will resolve? Or is this environment just a fundamental mismatch for a teenage herding dog?
If we choose to hold onto Ashe after the Husky leaves on Sunday, how do I effectively train a hyper-social, reactive Aussie to learn emotional regulation and neutrality around kids and distractions when my bandwidth is already stretched so thin? Is there anything else I can try, or did I make the right call by reaching out to the rescues?