Suzi Walsh

Good morning.

Thanks for having me on.

They're actually not.

There's actually no correlation between one or the other.

And the current situation we have in Ireland, we don't have a great breeding plan or breeding profile in our country.

So actually, in fact, it's just as risky to get a purchased dog unless you're really, really knowledgeable and you know what you're doing and you're going to a really credible source.

It's just as risky as if you get the dog from a shelter and actually a lot of shelters

A lot of dog rescues are doing such great work assessing the dog before it even comes to your home.

And a lot of them use a foster care system where the dog is living in a family home.

So often you're even more guaranteed that that dog is going to be an easier bet than a dog from a breeder.

Oh, 100%.

You can set up your home and obviously keeping anything that might be valuable to you or you think that might be interesting to a dog that they'll want to destroy or they'll want to get at, keeping your home quite peaceful.

And one or two pointers I would say is if you're going to bring a dog into your home, make sure you bring them early in the morning.

Make sure before you bring them in the car that they haven't eaten.

Make sure that they have the entire day to get settled and more comfortable in your home environment.

Keep everything quite minimal.

Don't let too many guests, and I know everybody's excited when there's a new dog in the home,

But just try and keep the first kind of 72 hours pretty chill and pretty relaxed and try and get into a routine type scenario as soon as you possibly can.

Don't concentrate on going on walks or training or obedience in the first few days because the dog will just want to decompress and kind of find their feet in their new home and in their new environment.

So just get used to them and don't put any pressure on the dog.