Five things to consider when getting two puppies together

The difficulties of getting two puppies together

Puppies are a lot of work. We all realise this at the time but, a bit like the pain of childbirth, everyone seems to forget what the first few months were like once they have an older and settled pet. This may seem harsh advice but if you are tempted to get two puppies together, please take a few moments to read the below points in this article.

1. House training puppies

House training is a 24/7 activity. Puppies go from playing or sleeping to piddling or pooping on the carpet in a nanosecond. You need the reactions of a Formula 1 driver to scoop them up and get them outside before they stain your rug or laminate flooring. Imagine multiplying that by two?

House training is one of the toughest aspects of owning a puppy. They have very little control over their bladders in the first few weeks and even the smallest dog can piddle a large amount of liquid. If you are leaving your puppies to piddle on paper overnight, you will come downstairs to papier mache hell in the morning. They are likely to have laid in it and end up with urine soaked paper on them. If you are getting up in the night to let the puppies out, you may be lucky that they both piddle right away as soon as you put them outside or you might find one or neither of them piddle but decide it’s playtime instead.

It’s worth noting here that the smaller breeds are the most difficult to house train as their bladders have such a tiny capacity.

2. Two's company

A common reason for getting two pups together is so that they keep each other company. That’s true in many cases but it can also cause you some huge headaches.

For starters, unless you put in a superhuman amount of effort to bond with them and train them separately, they will form a bond with each other much stronger than they have with the humans. Think about it from their point of view – they don’t have to learn a new language if they have each other. It’s like Brits sticking together when they go abroad.

3. Socialising

A pair of pups still require socialising. Just because they have met each other doesn’t mean they’ll be okay with any other dog in the world. So this means taking them everywhere you can think of during the socialisation period up to 16 weeks That’s two puppies to carry. Two puppies to protect. Two puppies to train.

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4. Same sex or different?

If you get same sex siblings they will inevitably be similar in a lot of ways. Whilst this may look really cute as pups, as they grow and they play fight and discover about the world, there could well be conflict if they are evenly matched. A lot of people end up having to choose which pup to rehome when they get older and this is heartbreaking, especially as when they are parted the pups have to learn a new set of skills to interact with others that they missed out on as pups.

If you get a boy and girl, well, the chances of conflict are lessened but I’m afraid dogs are no respecters of human social norms when it comes to sex. When the girl comes into season they probably will mate – yucky eh?

Oh, and the chewing. Puppies chew – it’s about as certain as gravity and if two pups get together on a destruction fest, you’d better watch out. They seem to egg each other on and the damage can be more than double that of one pup.

5. The costs

Then, of course, there’s the expense. Puppies need injections and worming and flea treatment and equipment and training and insurance and veterinary care. Everything is doubled.

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule and I’m sure many people can cite instances where two pups have been brought up together successfully. But for every one of these circumstances,  there are innumerable where it has gone wrong.