Advice Needed

I'm adopting a shih tzu that I located on petfinder. I was told he is 9 weeks old. I just spoke with this foster mom who told me he is actually about 5 months old, has been living with other animals at her farm and has never been on a leash, etc.

I'm a little concerned that they mislead me to believe he's considerably older than he is. I wouldn't mind so much but I"m concerned it's going to be much harder to train him.

Any thoughts?

Re: Advice Needed

We adopted our dog when he was 6 months old. The woman we adopted him from told us on the phone he was too small to train him to go outside. She had wee wee pads throughout the house. When we went to pick upTiny, he was not too small at all.

When we brought him home, I placed the wee wee pads in the house, but trained him to go outside by slowly removing the pads. The last two I left was one by the front and one by the back door. Luckly, he was easy to train.

Re: Advice Needed

I would not adopt a dog unless it was 41/2 - 5mos.. I trained my dog in 2 days.. she was 5mos,, The younger the harder if you ask me.. they are like new borns.. I say go for it.. She is also socialized w/other dogs.. That is so terrific.. Do you have any idea how great that is!! I bet its a great dog and easy.. Also you dont have to start w/wee wee pads.. He is old enough w/shot to go right out side!!

Re: Advice Needed

I wouldn't be concerned about that age and training so much.

I would be more suspicious/less trusting about the overall health of the dog just because they were misleading to begin with.

Re: Advice Needed

I just adopted a dog too and when I was looking around online and emailed about a few, I also found that ages were off... I guess they post and just don't go back to update all that frequently. Probably beacuse most people are more likely to adopt the younger ones.

I agree that 5 months would probably be easier to train than 9 weeks. The dog I just adopted is a year and a half and she pretty much had no training previously. I taught her to sit the first day and she was housebroken withing the first week

Good luck!

Message edited 10/20/2008 9:37:05 AM.

Re: Advice Needed

Thank you for the input. I'm so excited, we pick him up Wednesday morning!

I was a little apprehensive finding out he's older than they had him listed as but after speaking with this foster mom again, he was 9 weeks when he was rescued. Seems like they just didn't update the site.