<p>what will you do with the puppy after you graduate?</p>
<p>My D at the same age wanted a dog. It was all she could think about. We told her in no uncertain terms that all the expenses of a dog would be on her. We also told her that there would be no chance that the dog would ever be coming to live with us. My D had done volunteer work at a shelter, worked at a pet store. She had raised a puppy with family help. She ended up deciding to wait. Her roommate did get a dog. The dog hated being left alone. The girl did not stick to the crate training. The dog chewed up my D’s shoes, cell phone, cell phone charger to name a few things. The girl did not have money to replace my D’s things. My D eventually moved out. Last I heard the roommate got sick, had to be hospitalized for a week. A friend took the dog. The girl ended up having to go home. The poor dog ended up back at the pound. My D begged us to take the dog. She loved it and hated to see it go to the pound.
We have a 16 wk old puppy. It is our 6th dog. We had forgotton how much work a puppy can be. The getting up at night. The accidents in the crate. Finding a good place to keep it while I am out during the day. We have a large yard so I don’t have to put him in the crate each time I go out. Our puppy absolutely is not able to be left unattended in the house for even minutes. It is a ton of work. He is cute but…
I would look into fostering. I am on the email list for a non-profit shelter. They often are looking for foster parents. They also are almost entirely run by volunteers. Volunteers bath, walk and even sit inside the kennels and read.</p>
<p>So you are planning on going to med school in a couple of years. And now you are a full-time college student who is also working, and who does not have a dorm meal plan. It sounds to me like you are not going to have much time to devote to a dog.</p>
<p>I see that you want to go running with your dog. Running with a puppy is not recommended. Following is a website on this subject, [Dr</a> J on Running - Running with your Dog](<a href=“http://jabbour.org/19980921.html]Dr”>Dr J on Running - Running with your Dog) that includes valuable information. Following are some highlights:</p>
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<p>“The ideal running dog is medium-built, weighs 50 to 70 pounds, and has short light hair.”</p>
<p>Our dog with these ideal characteristics turned out to be a sprinter. Ds discovered that no amount of training would turn him into a distance runner and gave up on him. Since then he gained a few pounds as well as a healthy habit of napping for many hours. :)</p>
<p>The scholarship money should be for school - not for a puppy, vacation, new bike, or other similar indulgences not associated directly with school. The idea behind scholarships is to help with education and if you spend it on gifts for yourself your parents will just have to pay that much more. You should feel quite good about yourself having won it and being able to use it to contribute to your own education - especially since you say you have a lot more education expense ahead of you.</p>
<p>As a dog lover myself who has done some work with a dog rescue place (and whose D did a lot of work with the rescue place) and the owner of a rescued dog - please ‘don’t’ get a dog now. </p>
<p>Dogs, and especially puppies, need to have the owner spend an adequate amount of time with the dog, need an owner with the means to take care of a dog (spoken from someone who’s paid for multiple animal surgeries, MRIs, etc. to the tune of thousands of dollars), and need an owner who’ll ensure they can be taken care of all day every single day.</p>
<p>As a person in college your life is full of unknowns - you might decide to study abroad, study at another school, do an internship elsewhere, go to grad school somewhere, get involved with a significant other who might have a conflict with the dog, etc. You need to realize that getting a dog at this point is much more about ‘you’ than the dog and it’s irresponsible to get a dog when one isn’t truly ready for it time-wise and financially. As someone planning to go to med school it makes even less sense since I doubt you’ll have a lot of free time or money for quite a while. Also, your neighbors will appreciate it if you don’t get a dog that has to be alone in a home all day (likely barking and whining most of the time you’re gone). My D’s having to put up with one of those now and I’ve had to put up with it as well.</p>
<p>Too many dogs end up in shelters, animal rescue places, or euthanized because the owner’s ‘plans changed’. </p>
<p>The good news is that you have plenty of time to get a dog in a responsible manner after you’re done with college, are stable in a job, and can see more of that road ahead.</p>
<p>I’m wondering…is the overwhelming response you are getting making any impression? </p>
<p>I"m not offended at all. While you are clearly a very smart and thoughtful young woman, you simply do not have the life experience to see that this is not fair to a dog, no matter how much you would love it. </p>
<p>While I understand feeling good about being rewarded for your hard work, unless this money was designated for a puppy, you are knowingly misusing it. A sign of maturity would be to insist that your extremely generous parents kept it. Or at least put it towards expenses. In this day and age, if you do get this puppy, at least have the tact to not tell people it invovled scholarship money meant to support your academic career.</p>
<p>Please don’t get a puppy. You have said that you have classes from 8-12. So for approximately 5 hours every morning (you need to allow time for coming and going) the dog already will be left alone. Then you said you have a job. Can you take the dog with you to your job? </p>
<p>We adopted a 6 1/2 year old lab, and even an adult dog needs a ton of attention and exercise. I walk him 4-5 miles a day, and stop because I run out of time and energy–he could keep going. I’ve only had him for 4 months, and already spent close to $1000 on him- vaccines, ear infections exam and meds, staph infection exam and meds, blood tests for hypothyroidism, meds for hypothyroidism, microchipping, etc. That’s only three months, and doesn’t include food, treats, toys, etc.
I’m a full time homemaker, and I wouldn’t get a dog if both H and I worked , unless I could afford doggie day care. A dog is a pack animal that needs to be with his people. A dog stuck in a crate for 5-8 hours a day isn’t going to be a happy or well adjusted animal. My daughter’s best friend is a first year med student, and the above poster is correct when she said the hours are 9-5, five days a week.</p>
<p>You really aren’t in a position to be a good dog parent. I hope you reconsider. :(</p>
<p>OP - do you not like cats? There are lots and lots of cats in need of rescue and they do much better with busy owners.</p>
<p>I agree with cartera45. Get a cat. I got my first one a few years ago. I’ve always had dogs and didn’t think I wanted a cat. But my dds prevailed and I’m glad they did. I love my dog but the cat is soooo much easier. He is also very entertaining. I will probably always have a cat from now on in my life. Whereas, the dog, as much as I love him demands (yes, demands) a lot of energy which is hard to come by in the evenings. Right now, the cat is asleep on the couch, and the dog is sighing and moaning on the floor even though he has had two big outings today. The dog, by the way, is nine years old and just cannot be tired out.</p>
<p>^^ However, one needs to be willing and able to potentially spend a lot of money on cats as well - I’ve spent thousands on vet bills for cats.</p>
<p>I joke that I’m putting my vet’s sons through college in addition to my daughter. I want a brass plaque on the exam room door!</p>
<p>I can understand your desire to have a dog if you are an animal person, my DD who had the cat is now in grad school just under an hour from our home, she has evolved into coming here on the weekends and sleeping with the dog…she loves the dog and he loves her, but she does not have time for him every day…she has pet sit him for us and has to rearrange her schedule to address his needs.</p>
<p>Our dog is almost 9 and he needs a good 3-5 mile off leash run/walk/chew/sniff time or he cannot settle down. A good dog is a dog who is well exercised. Our dog’s only concession to age is that he can wait until the afternoon for his walk whereas in his first few years it had to be first thing.</p>
<p>A cat could work or perhaps you could try the helper dog training- this would let you do a good service for society and try out the experience of having a dog, might give you the best of both worlds</p>
<p>Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t give the scholarship back to the foundation. You’ve worked hard for it; there are very few opportunities to get recognition for pure merit; and you have no reason to feel guilty over what other students can or can’t afford. All the more so because, as an apparent full-freight student, you’re already subsidizing some of your classmates to begin with. You’re going to have plenty of socialism to contend with in the next few years as it is.</p>
<p>As to the puppy, it sounds like you’ve thought this through with great care and maturity. Like others, I’m not sure it’s a great idea for someone in your situation – I know that even a cat was a challenge for me while working and going to college – however, it sounds like you’re about as well prepared as someone in your situation could be. Like others, I hope you’ll consider waiting a while until your life is a bit simpler. Even if only for the sake of having a financial cushion without the potential for large, unpredictable expenses. Best wishes, Kristin.</p>
<p>lol… you ask parents for advice, so you get parental advice. I don’t see the connection between the scholarship and the dog. Congrats on the scholarship. (Give it to someone who needs it? There’s a big LOL!!! Yes, to each according to his need, from each according to his ability… but that’s another topic) </p>
<p>I felt very deprived growing up in a home with no dog, so during the summer after my sophomore year of college I got a puppy. Mostly golden retriever, small female, turned out to be the best dog in the world. I was going to live in the basement of a house with 5 other people that I did not know upstairs. There was already another dog in the house (Doberman). Everyone got along great. A big plus for me was having taken an excellent psych course in behavior modification the previous semester so I trained my dog very well. I trained her to not go in the street without my permission. I could ride my bike and she would run along with me on the sidewalk and wait for my signal at intersections. She was an insatiable retriever and I could give her a great workout in 15 minutes with a tennis ball and an open field. I’m not sure I even owned a leash back then. She really was under voice control. By the time I graduated and got a fulltime job in Washington D.C. she could curl up in my bed and be fine from 8 am until I came home at 6pm, with a good walk/run fetch in the morning and when I got home. </p>
<p>So the trick is to get a really good dog. 
Actually, not kidding. I have since learned there are vast differences between breeds as to “trainability.” The golden retriever personality lives to please its owner. The dog we have now (Westie) lives to please herself! Much more of a challenge to train - even simple things, like “come”… she goes, “huh? what? me? maybe later…”</p>
<p>Does your family have a dog at home that you could bring to school with you? My junior yr I lived with two friends. One girl had her family dog from home. He was an older dog and pretty content to spend the day lounging in the house. My other roommate brought a horse to college. She found it was hard to make time for a horse and eventually sold it. (She did not keep the horse in our yard)
If you had a dog from home you could try out how your lifestyle fit having a pet. If it didn’t work out the dog could just go back home.</p>
<p>What will you do with your dog when you are in medical school, or during your residency when you will probably work overnight at the hospital every third night or so, and that’s in addition to working all day? This may seem far in the future, but believe me, it isn’t. It will be very difficult to be home to take your dog outside regularly, much less do the long walks. (And no doctor I know has the time to take a dog out except when it’s dark out – 6am or 9pm. And taking your dog to work is definitely not an option.)</p>
<p>We have the world’s easiest dog, which we got as a puppy. She can be left alone for hours, is never destructive, and can easily go 8-10 hours without relieving herself. She’s one in a million. Even so, I did nothing but train her for the first month of her life. And I mean NOTHING – I had to put my life on hold. Realistically, it takes at least 3 months to train a puppy.</p>
<p>Also, you may have taken a lot of responsibility for your dog while growing up, but raising and caring for a dog as an independent adult is not the same. It sounds like you have done a lot of research and, certainly, you’re more prepared for dog ownership than we were. But we were a family of four, all willing to pitch in.</p>
<p>Just make sure you think about the logistics of caring for your dog in the near (and foreseeable future) when you will have absolutely no control over your time. Some day, no doubt, you will have the dog of your dreams, but for now, waiting may be the truly mature and unselfish thing to do.</p>