Hello
Myself & my partner (32 & 35 yo) have been working toward a time in our lives where we can have our own dog for the past few years, we've both reached a point in our careers where owning a dog and all that comes with it wont be a financial strain and due to Covid are now WFH more and generally at home more - I completely appreciate though, the current situation we are all in is hopefully going to be easing in the next year!
We have decided on a show cocker and have done loads of research, we like the show cocker as its a medium dog, suited to city living and a loving & affectionate breed that we can take for a run once old enough as well as cuddle up with.
We are both freelance my partner does odd days and I do longer contracts, which are 5 days a week, with contract breaks, my job has now moved to be WFH rather than in an office which is not anticipated to change, to best case more than a few days in the office per week in 2021. For the odd days, that we are both out of the house (once the pup is 6+ months old) we have found a number of doggy day care & dog walking options in our area, we would hope to be able to do a dog walker visit on days such as this rather than doggy day care once the pup is older, we've done up a budget including this along with insurance, food and all the other expenditure that a pup will cost, we have many friends in the area who we could call on, dependable family who live on a farm (though they are not local) who could take the dog if we are required to be away for work for any substantial time and we hope to meet lots of other dog pals through the local community.
We have both grown up with a variety of the dogs (Labs, Jack Russels, Pointers), we love exercising and are not at all adverse to rainy walks and training a puppy, brining it up as our own is something we look forward to rather than class as a chore!
Our living situation is good, we have a reasonably sized ground floor terrace flat in London, with a medium fenced in garden that looks back onto our local park. The only negative is being in a terrace ground level we have an upstairs flat with 2 occupants who you can hear walking, talking etc.. at times and you get distant noise from neighbours eitherside and some street noise, though we are on a residential street.
My main concern with a show cocker is barking and destuction! Of course any pup will bark at a knock on the door and cause some damage, but I have concerns with the cocker breed being more of a barker than others for our neighbours, especially if we get into a situation where we can never leave the dog at home by itself for a few hours - so it would be great to hear experiances from others living in a similar terraced situation.
I feel prepared to take on the challenge and all things that considered have done a mass of research and am very aware this is a 10+ year commitment not a year or two but just have some small anxieties and reservations over whether this is in reality the right breed for us.
Any experiances and thoughts welcome!
Thank you