My West Highland Terrier is nearly 2 years old. We got him at 8 weeks and the first 6 months he took over our lives. When a pup he needed to go outside every ho

My West Highland Terrier is nearly 2 years old. We got him at 8 weeks and the first 6 months he took over our lives. When a pup he needed to go outside every hour, on the hour, 24 hours a day. Once he got past that stage it was time for puppy classes and training and constantly making sure he was behaving etc. We were exhausted for 6 months and this was the first 6 months of founding http://www.radfan.com http://www.radfan.com. Now he is older he still needs lot of walking, playing with and generally looking after BUT I wouldn't have it any other way. He is awesome, every day is the best day in the world for him. He's great to have around during the day and taking him for a walk and playing with him are the highlights of our day. He makes us laugh, he gives us something else to focus on apart from work and best of all he is free entertainment (if you exclude pet insurance, food and toys). When you buy a puppy you are buying the potential of what that dog could be, it is down to you to train and instil the correct behaviours in him. I think dog training (done correctly, clicker training with treats and positive renforcement) aligns very well with a technical/science mindset as I have found it really fun trying to debug why my dog does X when he should do Y and how to modify that in some way. If you can, adopt a dog though. It's rubbish that old dogs can't learn new tricks and so many dogs need new homes and more often than not, even with the most disobedient dog you can still skip the house training bit as that tends to be sorted unless they have had a horrific start in life.