By the time I was seriously considering getting a German Pinscher, I had done a ton of online research and decided I was getting a puppy. Given my past dogs and their behavioral issues, I desperately wanted a friendly one this time around. So even though I knew it was going to be emotionally exhausting and a lot of work, I wanted to start from scratch and mold this puppy into the kind of dog that I wanted.
Once I decided on the breed, I got onto the AKC website and looked up breeders in my area. I started following two of them on Facebook and then in August 2016, I decided I should email Windamir German Pinschers directly and ask if they thought a German Pinscher would be an okay fit for my lifestyle. I mean, I shouldn’t be daydreaming about a particular breed if it wasn’t going to work. If they had said no, I would have respected that. In fact, I was terrified they’d say no. I didn’t have a good fallback breed. Rat terriers, maybe? But Windamir German Pinschers responded and said that if I was serious about having a hiking companion, a German Pinscher would love that and they invited me to come out and visit their dogs at the kennel and we could talk. So I did. They had puppies and I cuddled several of them while I asked my questions.
They said it was doable for me to be a single, working pet parent as long as I understood that when I came home, my puppy was going to be wired and was going to need some serious exercise. They said it was possible to train a puppy to get used to sleeping during the day. (I had also read it was sometimes easier to train puppies to adapting to that lifestyle than training older dogs who might’ve had a different lifestyle with a prior owner.)
The other bit of advice that the breeder gave me was that I should not take a week off to bond with my puppy as that would actually be more traumatizing to my puppy because it would not be my real routine. Going home with a stranger was already a huge shock for a new puppy, and to change the whole routine again one week later would not help my puppy’s anxiety. I thanked them for the information and the visit and drove home.
My plan was not to get a puppy until Spring 2017. I did this for two reasons, 1) I had a house that needed some repairs and I wanted to make sure that I was financially secure before I added puppy expenses to the mix, and 2) I knew that if I was going to train myself to add morning and evening dog walks to my routine, I would have an easier time if the days were getting warmer and lighter.
I waited until January 2017 and emailed the same breeder and told her I was interested in getting a puppy. As it happened, the first litter available was going to be a red litter in April and it was going to be through a co-breeder (Budon’s German Pinschers) who owned the dame. So I sent in my deposit, indicated that my first preference was a female, and that’s how I came to own Ayla.
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