I'm hoping mamacatnv will see this and post. They just adopted one. I'll send her a Facebook message with a link to this thread just in case she misses it. They have been very pleased with theirs, and they are first time dog owners.
Good luck, and thanks for adopting instead of buying!
I'm here! Thanks Horseshowmom for the link
As Horseshowmom said, we have never owned a dog and we adopted a teenage Pyr from a rescue a few weeks ago. We live in Central TX
We did a lot of research before we even went in search of a new furrball for our family. We are fairly lazy and low maintenance, we wanted a dog that would fit our lifestyle and that would be a good house dog. I had no intention on getting a dog just to have it live in our backyard.
Once we settled on the Pyr, we started with PetFinder and that led us to a local rescue group. We met the rescue owner and spent a lot of time talking with her about us, our lifestyle and our expectations. She had about 60 dogs on her huge ranch. She suggested 3 to us. We arranged to meet the perspective dogs. My daughter is 14, she is the owner of this dog. We finance the venture but this is her dog. She immediately bonded with a teenage Pyr. He was 14 months old and had recently been surrendered by an owner who thought he would be fun to breed.
Over the next month, we were back and forth to the ranch to visit our boy. The entire family was included. We committed to adopt our guy and went about getting ourselves a vet and further educated regarding the Pyrs.
Our guys name is Griffyndor aka Griff - he is 72#'s of cream and white fluff. He has a badger face and is just adorable. He is about 35-40#s underweight and we are diligently trying to get some weight on him. Pyrs are petite eaters and fattening him up, per our vet, will take some time.
Meanwhile he has slowly settled into our home which consisted of 3 house cats. He is stubborn, you can see it in him, he will come when we call him, if he wants to but at the same time he has learned he is not allowed in the kitchen and he obeys. He follows my daughter everywhere and if she is not home he is with either myself or my husband. He is a total lover but we have noticed that when strangers show up, he is alert. We recently moved and have had handymen, workers etc in our home and he has showed no aggression but he is paying attention and often he will put himself between the workers in our home and my daughter. This is what my DH wanted in a dog. He didn't want mean but he wanted a dog that knew who his family was.
He has given almost no notice to the cats and they are all settling in with each other. Even our grumpy old man cat who still hisses at him, doesn't lunge at him and I have a picture I took last week of our Fat Cat and Griff hanging out together with DD on the bed.
These dogs were bred to guard livestock, the rescue where we got our boy is full of livestock guard flunkies. The rescue will not place their Pyrs to be livestock guard dogs, these guys are to be house dogs and family pets.
These dogs will herd you, Griff tries to herd all of us. We don't allow it much, we know he has to learn his place in the pack and alpha dog is not his place so we are careful with what we let him get away with.
Our boy was with us 3 days before we ever heard him bark, when he barks, dang, the walls rattle. He has never barked in the house but when he is in the yard he will bark at people walking by. These dogs are known barkers, especially at night but Griff is in the house with us and it has not been an issue. There are also folks who say this breed is nocturnal, well, from what we have experienced this guy sleeps when we sleep and then a lot more in between. He sleeps with my daughter and the other day she slept to 2 in the afternoon, so did the dog. I had let him out in the morning to go potty but then he was back in her room and sacked out with her.
Our boy came to us house and leash trained. On a leash he is completely docile, we take him all sorts of places and are actively working to socialize him. Pyrs tend to be timid and our boy was no exception.
Griff has been with us now for 2 weeks and we are learning as much about him as he is of us. I must say, I am not a fan of dogs but I really like this guy. He's lovable and alert. He is well behaved and actually kind of funny. When my husband goes to bed, Griff hops up there with him and refuses to get down, he won't look at us, its like he is laughing at us and at the same time saying "if I don't look at you I can ignore you"
Pyrs need to be fenced or leashed, they are wanderers and will roam if not confined. We have not yet tried him out at a dog park but we know he lived with 60 other dogs as well as many dogs of all sizes and temperaments while at the rescue with no issues.
As others have said, if you are looking for a dog to play with, to chase a ball, to run with you etc, this is not the dog for you. If you are looking for large, lovable, lazy, protective herder and can deal with a lot of shedding - A LOT, then perhaps, this might be a dog for you.
FYI, due to the extreme heat here in TX our Pyr is and will be a primarily indoor dog
Perle barks all night long every night. We tried to keep her in at night when she was a puppy and it was worse than having a newborn. We finally compromised(meaning she got her way
) and leave her out at night. Now we are all happier, even though she still keeps me and DH awake many nights. We live in a very rural area so we don't have neighbors to annoy. She is the sweetest dog ever and loves snow and hates the summer heat. She also does seem to find any thing dead within a 1 mile radius to roll in given the opportunity.
The owner of the rescue will take good care of him, I'm not as worried as DD is.
