u/baconuggets

Would you get a second large dog in our situation? Looking for perspectives from people who have had to make this decision

We’re trying to decide whether to get a second dog, and I’d especially love to hear from people who have had two large dogs while also having young kids.

We currently have a 5-year-old, \~95lbs Labrador who we absolutely love. He’s an amazing dog - smart and very well trained, super handsome with a fox red coat and just plain awesome overall. Years ago the family we got him from asked if we’d be willing to take another female puppy from the same family line when they bred again. At the time we lived nearby, had no kids, and getting another Lab someday sounded great, so we agreed. We were also told to expect the new dog in \~2-3 years, but due to fertility issues it took more than 5 years.

Fast forward five years and our lives are pretty different. We live across the country now, have a 3 year old child, and are planning on having another kid. Our dog's sister just had a litter and there’s a female puppy that the family is expecting us to take in about three weeks. She’ll probably be around \~70lbs full grown.

We love dogs and part of us really likes the idea of having two Labs, especially since we know and love this family line. We’re good dog owners and financially we can handle the extra food/vet/boarding costs. I also like the idea of our current dog having a companion. I am home almost all the time during the day and my kid goes to school part time, so I would have the bandwidth to add this to our plates.

But now that it’s actually happening, we’re getting pretty nervous about the practical reality.

Our current Lab has fairly significant separation anxiety. We've been working on it and it has improved a bit over the years, but spontaneous outings can still be tough because he sometimes gets really anxious when he realizes we're leaving and loses his mind. Part of us wonders if having another dog around might help him feel less alone, but we also know that’s definitely not guaranteed and we worry about the puppy potentially learning some of his anxious behavior.

We’re also realizing how much harder two big dogs could make everyday logistics. Walking two Labs while also dealing with (eventually) two kids, fitting two dogs + car seat(s) + all the kid stuff in the car, traveling, finding someone to watch two large dogs, bringing them places, twice the shedding/mud/etc. None of these things individually seem like dealbreakers, but together it feels like it could make our lives considerably less flexible.

We often take our current dog out with us for day to day stuff like to the beach (where allowed), to our favorite breweries, obviously to parks and playgrounds with our daughter etc. I'm getting worried that our dogs would mostly fade out of that part of our lives because the amount of chaos we would bring to a lot of these places would be too much.

The breeding family originally also wanted us to eventually breed the female to help continue the line. We were happy to agree to that years ago, but that's another thing that feels like a much bigger commitment now, especially because we realized it's going to be much harder to find places/people to watch her for a daycare or boarding situation. We'd probably be forced to go with house sitting instead when we travel.

I'm started to get really stressed about making this decision on whether or not to take the puppy. We talked to the family with the puppies last night about our concerns and they made us feel much better about the possibility of not accepting the dog if that's what we decide to do as they're pretty confident they could find someone else that would take great care of her and breed her too. My wife and I also have planned for the last 5 years to get another dog from this family line because we love them so much and we want our current amazing companion to help train a new dog, and if we don't accept this dog now I think we would plan to get one from the next, and probably final, litter that this family will breed, but that could easily be 2 years down the line from now and maybe with our current dog getting older and who knows how else our lives have changed by then - should we just take this one now?

If anyone here has been in a somewhat similar situation and made either the decision to get or not get an additional furball I would love to hear your perspectives. My wife and I have talked about it ad nauseum at this point and we still feel about 50/50 about what to do now. Help! Lol TIA!

I'll try not to make this too long, but essentially my wife's only sibling is her younger (by 10 years) sister who is 23 and her and I got along just fine, or even really well, for most of the last 10 years that I've been with my wife - that is until an ongoing fight started between us around 8 or 9 months ago. She's your classic baby of the family who has always gotten her way and can't handle it when she doesn't get what she wants or someone calls her out on her shit; which is exactly what I did that ended up starting the fight. She was rude, entitled, self centered and just plain angry about the fact that my wife and I moved to another state with our young daughter for months before the move and then really ramped it up during the move which led to me eventually saying in more words than this "quit it with the attitude! This move and life change is hard enough and you're just making it harder for all of us". Since then she's essentially hated my guts.

It really came to a head during the holidays last year when the family was all together, and drinking, and my wife and her sister were at each other's throats because of how SIL was treating me. I was being really polite and just fun and happy, trying to keep the peace...until I wasn't. MIL and SIL sort of exploded when my wife called them out on their behavior and long story short I lost my temper too and I really let loose verbally on them for a min or two. I honestly don't remember it very well, but I basically called them out for being childish, immature, alcoholics etc. etc. So yeah...SIL really hates me now. Whoops! I've of course since apologized and since then I've literally been nothing but nice, polite, helpful and patient, while at the same time working with my wife to enforce some boundaries because this family really likes to encroach ESPECIALLY when it concerns my daughter.

Well, just this weekend my wife and I traveled with my daughter to a funeral where SIL was coming as well. She at first threatened to not come if I was coming; my wife called her bluff and just said "I need my husband there for support, sorry if that's a problem for you" but she caved and came anyway.

My goal all funeral weekend long was to just support my wife. It was really her friend that passed away and I just wanted to be there for her, help care for our daughter and keep her distracted during the service, and also keep the peace with SIL simply because that's what my wife needed. I honestly did a really good job. I don't know what I could have done better for the majority of the time we were with SIL and at the funeral. However, after the service we were driving to the AirBnb that we reluctantly let SIL stay in with us and my wife was pretty wasted at this point and was getting annoyed with her sister, because she was being a bit of a brat and petulant. My wife suggested that we leave our daughter with SIL at the AirBnb while we go get a drink (she needed to get away from her sister and also our kid was crying from exhaustion which added to her stress). I mentioned in private to my wife something about how we should maybe wait until our kid was asleep before we left but she basically was like "I want to leave now". So we did. After we left I asked her "Did you talk to your sister about leaving her as a babysitter with our crying kid?" and she said no, and I knew we were going to have problems then. And we did! Lol.

The texts started rolling in about how rude it was of us to do that (fair enough) so my wife told her we'd head home right away. When we got home our kid was asleep in our bed and SIL was in the bathroom connected to our room (she was going to sleep on the pull out couch in the living room) for like 30 min. When she eventually came out of the bathroom and went to the living room, my wife and kid are asleep and I was almost asleep, but she was angry and stomping around making noise and had lights on, so I got out of bed to close the door. As I was closing it, she suddenly tries to barge into the room and shoves the door into my and starts screaming "WHERE'S MY SISTER? WHERE'S MY SISTER?!" to which I responded "stop being so aggressive! And stop yelling, there is a child sleeping!" in a hushed but stern tone. She responded by screaming at me that I'm the r-word and demanded to talk to her sister. So I said "Wife, your sister's mad, you'd better go talk to her".

SIL cry screams at her, slams some doors, calls me swear words and then storms off to go for a walk I guess. The next morning is when things get really fun. SIL blames me for everything, apparently and is NOT shy about it. She gets physically aggressive with me by shoulder checking me when I walk by, and deliberately tries to trip me while I'm carrying my toddler, in front of my wife. I very calmly said "SIL, if you're physically aggressive with me again, we're going to have problems" and she mocked me the way a 12 year old would by repeating my words in a dumb voice. I looked at my wife and asked for her support and she said "SIL, not ok!". But that wasn't enough. SIL yelled obscenities at me in front of our kid, attacked me in every way possible, mocked me the 12 year old way multiple times again etc. etc. etc. So I had it. I was done. I told my wife that I'm separating my kid from SIL and that can happen either by me taking the kid and leaving the house for awhile, or we tell her to leave and we get the cops involved if necessary.

Here's where I got really disappointed. My wife, who is pretty exhausted by all of this by now, said she agreed with me, but then convinced me to take a walk with her to cool off, so we left my toddler with the childish brat and took a walk and distracted ourselves for a bit. She told me she called her mom during the height of the fight today and told her "SIL is physically assaulting baconuggets and it's not ok" and apparently my MIL SIDED WITH SIL (which is literally always the case, but this time I thought maybe her crossing some pretty huge lines might have made a difference). MIL said something like "well emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse". Wow. Just wow.

I made it very clear to my wife that this is beyond not ok and I need her to back me up on this. She sort of agreed, but also tried to play the whole "all of us made mistakes" card. I was dumbfounded. We've had an excellent marriage and usually see eye to eye on these things, but I just couldn't believe it. She couldn't cite any mistakes I made this weekend or even the last few months. SIL is still pissed off about things I apparently did wrong years ago.

It sucks for my wife, she's stuck between a rock and hard place, but come on - SIL is doing some awful shit in front of our kid. That's where I draw the line and any reasonable person should. My wife is worried that I will weaponize our daughter against SIL by not allowing SIL to see her. I've always said I wouldn't ever weaponize her out of anger, however I will also not allow SIL to stay in my house again and I will not do any favors for her like helping her facetime our daughter or something anymore. She doesn't get to treat me like that and expect me to be cordial or helpful to her. No. Way.

So now I don't know what to do. SIL needs to grow up. She's 23 going on 13 and it seriously shows in many ways. I will not allow the toxicity to affect my daughter, but my wife is struggling with how this will affect her relationship with SIL and MIL. I fear we've come to the point where she essentially needs to choose between me and them. I'm not saying no contact between them is necessary, but for our own marriage and family's sake - boundaries need to be massively increased and enforced - by her. Right? Thoughts?!