How to Choose the Right Dog for Your Family

Nearly thirty years of working with dogs has taught me something that surprises a lot of people: most of the behaviour problems I'm called out to aren't really behaviour problems at all. They're mismatches.

A dog bred over centuries to do a demanding job, living a life that gives it nothing to do. The dog isn't broken. It's bored, or frustrated, or doing precisely what it was designed to do in a house where nobody wanted it done.

If you're thinking about getting a dog, the single most useful thing you can do is spend some time on this question before you fall in love with a photograph. Not because some breeds are better than others - they aren't - but because the right dog for your neighbour may be entirely wrong for you.

Start with your life, not the dog

Most people start with the dog. They see a breed they like the look of, read a friendly description, and work backwards from there. I'd suggest doing it the other way round.

Before you look at a single breed, be honest about these:

• How much exercise will your dog genuinely get - not on your best week, but on a wet Tuesday in February when you're busy and tired?

• How many hours a day will the dog be alone?

• Who else lives in the house? Young children, older relatives, other pets?

• How much grooming, mud and moulting can you actually live with?

• What's your home like - space, garden, stairs, how busy is the front door?

• What's your budget, not just for the puppy, but for food, insurance and vet care over twelve to fifteen years?

Write the answers down. That list is your brief, and any breed that doesn't fit it is the wrong breed, however lovely it is.

What breed groups actually tell you

Breed groups aren't just kennel club categories - they're a rough guide to what a dog was bred to spend its day doing. That instinct doesn't disappear because the dog now lives in a cottage in Devon.

Herding dogs

Border collies, Australian shepherds, corgis. Bred to work closely with a person all day, reading instructions and thinking ahead. Brilliant, quick, endlessly willing. They also need a job, and if you don't give them one they will invent one - often herding children, cyclists or cars. A collie in the right home is a joy. A collie with a walk round the block and a long afternoon alone is where a great many of my consultations start.

Gundogs

Labradors, spaniels, retrievers, pointers. Bred to work in partnership with people over long distances, using their noses. Generally sociable, generally food-motivated, generally trainable. But springers and cockers in particular carry a lot of drive, and a spaniel that isn't allowed to use its nose will find other outlets. "Good with families" is true of many gundogs - it doesn't mean low maintenance.

Terriers

Jack Russells, borders, Staffords, Patterdales. Bred to work independently, often underground, making their own decisions without a handler. That independence is the whole point of a terrier, and it's also why they can seem stubborn to people expecting a collie's biddability. Tenacious, funny, often far more dog than their size suggests.

Hounds

Beagles, whippets, greyhounds, dachshunds. Split roughly into scent hounds, which follow a nose and can become quite deaf to recall once they're on something, and sighthounds, which are frequently far calmer at home than people expect. A retired greyhound is often a gentle, low-key housemate. A beagle is a nose with a dog attached.

Working and guarding breeds

German shepherds, rottweilers, dobermanns, mastiffs. Bred to be watchful and to take their responsibilities seriously. In experienced hands and with careful early socialisation, these are magnificent dogs. They are not a good first dog, and they don't suit a home where the doorbell goes constantly and nobody's got time to manage it.

Toy breeds

Cavaliers, pugs, chihuahuas, bichons. Bred for company, which they're very good at. The common pitfall is that small dogs often get carried instead of trained and picked up instead of listened to, and end up anxious and defensive because nobody ever taught them how to cope. A small dog needs the same training and socialising as a large one.

Crossbreeds

A cross doesn't average out its parents. A cockapoo can land anywhere between the two, and often inherits the spaniel's drive along with the poodle's intelligence - which is a lot of dog, not a convenient middle. Meet the parents where you can, and plan for the more demanding half of the cross rather than the easier one.

A word on what's fashionable

Breed popularity moves in waves, and it's worth understanding why that matters.

Over the last decade or so, the doodle crosses and the flat-faced breeds - French bulldogs, pugs - rose enormously. Lockdown accelerated it. More recently the numbers have started to shift again, partly because of growing awareness of the health problems that come with very flat faces, and partly because a lot of people discovered that a doodle is a working cross with an unusual coat rather than an easy-going family dog.

Here's the part that matters behaviourally. When a breed becomes fashionable very quickly, three things tend to follow. Demand outstrips responsible breeding, so temperament and health get less attention than they should. The dogs go to homes chosen on appearance rather than suitability. And a cohort of dogs arrives all at once with the same unmet needs.

I'm not telling you to avoid a popular breed. I'm telling you that popularity is not information. It tells you what other people liked the look of. It tells you nothing at all about whether that dog will suit your life.

The quieter, less fashionable breeds - the plain-coloured, unremarkable-looking dogs that nobody's posting about  are frequently the easiest to live with, precisely because nobody's been breeding them for a trend.

The questions worth asking a breeder or rescue

• Can I meet the mother, and see where the puppies are being raised?

• What health testing has been done on both parents, and can I see the certificates?

• What have the puppies been exposed to - household noise, different people, being handled?

• What are the parents like to live with, honestly?

• What would make you say no to a home?

That last one is the most revealing question you can ask. A breeder or rescue who has no criteria isn't being flexible - they simply aren't paying attention to where their dogs end up. The good ones will interview you at least as thoroughly as you interview them, and that's a very good sign.

If you've already got the dog

Plenty of people read something like this after the fact, recognise their own dog in it, and feel a bit sunk. Please don't.

A mismatch isn't a life sentence. Once you understand what your dog was built to do, you can usually find an outlet for it that fits your actual life - scentwork for a nose-driven dog, a bit of structured problem-solving for a collie, proper decompression time for a dog who never gets any. It's rarely about doing more. It's about doing something different.

Most of the dogs I work with don't need a new home. They need a household that's finally understood them.

Thinking it through?

If you're weighing up a breed and want a second opinion before you commit - or if you've already got a dog and something isn't clicking - get in contact - we'll talk through what's going on and work out whether I'm the right person to help.

I'm based in South Brent and Buckfastleigh and work across the South Hams.