Hi Everyone,
It's been a while, sorry!

Brewster turned 11 in September. He's doing well. We moved to a bigger house with an acre and a half of land this past summer. My kids are now almost 8 and 9.5. They enjoy taking care of the pets and Brewster now enjoys an extra walk from Katharine when I am making dinner each afternoon.

We have started thinking about adding another dog to our pack. As you may remember we did have two shibas at one point, and despite a lot of training and help from behaviorists for almost 5 years, we were unable to make it work due to Bella's food aggression towards Brewster. Bella was a rescue and we didn't get to meet her in advance because we rescued her from the MidWest and had her flown to us. We didn't know she was food aggressive because that side of her didn't come out until she had lived with use for a bit and was more comfortable. We ended up rehoming her with a different family about 6 years ago, because she kept attacking Brewster every time my toddlers would so much as drop a cheerio.

We have always wanted a bigger pack, but after the heartache of having to rehome Bella, I couldn't even think about it for many years. Now that we are in a bigger house, and we have had some time to heal, and the kids are older, we would really like to add another shiba. Personally, I would love an already trained calm 3-year old Shiba rescue that won't chew my furniture. HA HA...Brewster, however, seems to like puppies much better than older dogs. I think it would be easiest to integrate another pack member if that member is much smaller and younger when s/he joins. Brewster is very picky about which breeds he likes and doesn't like, too. One thing I know is that he does not like labs! He doesn't like many black dogs, either. Brewster is dominant and set in his ways, but he knows his place in our pack. I think a red (submissive as much as you can tell as a pup) female would work best. We want to work with local breeders so that we can visit a few times with Brewster and make sure we find the best possible match, if we go forward with this at all.

My kids are amazing with animals. My daughter wants to be a veterinarian. They would love to show a dog or run agility, and I would obviously help them get into that, but I'm not sure if an unaltered pet would be best for us.

If Brewster does not seem to be open to the idea I will forget about it for now. I'm not going to tell the kids about it, either, until we are sure it's the right thing to do. I think having so much space and land and 2 really good well-trained extra hands will help a bunch, too!

Any advice? NH or MA breeder suggestions? Chelle - I know this is something you have done. Do pups cause a lot of stress to seniors?

Also, we prefer male dogs, usually, but I've always read that it is really hard to make 2 male shibas work. All you multi-shiba owners, can you tell me if that is true?
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Amanda's Pack: Greg the Husband, Kate the daughter, Liam the son, Brewster the Shiba Inu, and Cassie the Torbie!

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