Those are good reasons for starting with pups. Other good reasons would be that you don't have to fix someone else's bad raising or handling of dogs. Fiona my rescue Rottie who will fight with Dawn and other dogs, cowers in fear when I cuff her. Please keep in mind I do NOT hit my dogs. Her response to being cuffed and disciplined makes me suspect that she was hit by her previous owners, she will always have those fears for the rest of her life. My rescued Siberian Sasha is absolutely terrified of water. Now, no matter how hot Sasah gets, she will not get in their stock tank to cool off, which can be dangerous in our 100 degree Texas summers. Rascal, when I first picked him up off the streets, turned out to be aggressive to men of a certain skin tone. He was weary of white men or black men, but Hispanic men or darkly tanned white men were instantly attacked. I spend a year heavily socializing him, now he is fine with all men. But these are problems that are not easy to fix. but when rescuing adult dogs, it's a risk you take. By getting young pups, you eliminate the risk that the dogs were badly handled and have bad traits because of it.
On the other hand, if you have never trained a team before you most likely will run into trouble training them properly. Since most of the dogs run in pairs except the lead dog, maybe get your dogs in pairs for training. This way you are not trying to train 6 puppies at once, which would lead to chaos as puppies are rambunctious and mischievous and having so many to train at once would leave you frustrated and angry. You could start with a pair of trained adult dogs. Or if you are completely against adults, a pair of yearling dogs, who are partially trained but young enough to still bond with you. Get them settled and working well, then get 2 pups to train. Having 2 trained adult dogs would help in training the pups. And done this way you would have a 5 dog team (including your current Siberian) in 2 years. Time for the pups to grow and fill out enough to pull. After the adults and first set of pups are trained, look for a potential lead dog, if the dog doesn't cut it as lead, pair it with your Sibe and look again for a lead dog. This is one way of many that you could get a team trained and running in 5 years or less without getting 6 puppies all at once.
Last edited:
