How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

Recently DP and I have had some serious discussions about adding another member to our family. For as far back as I can remember, Nikki has been the love of our lives, but we feel confident we have enough love to give to another puppy. (Hopefully there will be some leftover love for our future human children.)

Four years ago I was coaching cheerleading in an old church gym. One of my girls had just received two shih tzu puppies as a gift from her father. She would often bring the two dogs to the gym and show them off to the other cheerleaders before practice. She had proudly named them Paris and Nikki. Despite their names, I fell almost immediately, in love.

Six months later, her father came to me and told me that the puppies were too much for their family to handle (I guess so--with five other dogs at home) and asked if I would be willing to adopt them-for free!I was living with my mom at the time and was shocked when she agreed to share this new adventure with me.

Paris and Nikki were adorable, yes. They were also B-A-D. As a teacher I will rarely use the word bad. I will say things like "poorly behaved" or "discipline problem." But these two were straight-up BAD. Previously living in a house with so many other dogs, they had picked up some horrible habits and I will let you use your imagination to figure out what they were.

When my mom and I would leave the house we would put Nikki and Paris in the laundry room and set up a baby-gate in the entrance so that they could not escape and destroy the house. One day these two trouble-makers figured out how to climb on top of each other and boost the other dog out of jail. Only problem was, once one puppy was out, they couldn't figure out how to then, get the other dog free. So, they would just sit and look at each other on opposite sides of the gate.

As you may have guessed, having the two puppies became too much for my mom and I and I had to make the difficult decision to choose one and give the other away. My immediate choice was Paris. She was the smaller of the two and seemed to be the calmer of the two mini-tasmanian devils. I had almost made up my mind, when both DP and my mom convinced me to take Nikki because she was the instigator-the bad one. They claimed she had more personality and would be more fun. Paris went to live with my X-boyfriend's mother. I hear she goes by the name Emma now. And the rest is, as the say, history!



Now that Nikki is four-years-old, DP has been begging me to get another dog so that Nikki will not be alone when I return to full-time work in three weeks. Since I adopted Nikki when she was six-months-old, I really have never trained a puppy. I am beyond-worried about our new house, carpets, furniture and of course the associated costs. I have heard horror stories about house-training new dogs.

We have been to a few pet stores but I haven't really fallen in love with any of the shih tzus we've checked out. We want the puppy to resemble Nikki's unique personality--fun, playful and fabulous! We are also undecided about getting another girl, or taking on a boy.

Any advice?