Five dogs?

For those of you that have multiple dogs...how much of a jump is it going from four to five?

Gracie and Cooper are officially ours now, which means we have a total of four dogs. I do, however, still really, really want my puppy. And since I don't think I can survive waiting until one of our current dogs passes away (which will hopefully not be for another six-ten years, considering the oldest is six), I am under the assumption that at some point we will have five dogs. Or that is what I'm currently telling myself so that I don't get majorly bummed out due to no puppy for the next decade.

Gracie is 13 pounds, Cooper is 8 pounds, Cynder is 28 pounds, and Chloe is 50 pounds (but she only eats a cup a food a day, so I consider her smaller than what she is lol). All are easy keepers, all are fairly well trained, and so far it seems like pack dynamics flow perfectly and their won't be any I-don't-like-you-so-I-will-eat-you issues.

Honestly, I found that 4-5 was an easy transition and from there all the others added are like nothing. Of course, all of our dogs are relatively "easy" and there's the standard shake up that comes with a puppy (night time potty breaks, etc.) but overall, once you break more than 4 it's not all that different, I don't find personally.

Do you already have an apartment lined up that will take 4-5 dogs? I have never seen an apartment that would take that many.

Just wondering.

We found going from 4-5 was no big deal. We also occasionally board and train so we have up to 6-8. The hardest jump, for me, was from 2 to 3 then after that it's all downhill LOL.

We have one 95 lb 2.5 year old GSD
One 60 lb 1 year old GSD
One 23 lb 2 year old Corgi
One 26 lb 1.5 year old Corgi
One 6 month old Border Collie
One not born yet sport mix of undetermined size on the way this Fall.

We are renters. It's not easy but we've been able to find places for all of our dogs so far...

How in the world do you find places to rent with that many dogs? Honest question because one of the main reasons I'm pushing so hard to buy a house in the next two years is so I can add a fourth dog. So far the MAX number of pets I can find to rent around here is 3 and that's few and far between. Most cap at 2. I'd love to be able to add a fourth dog sooner rather than later.

We've had up to 6 and it's imo not hard but not something I'd want to do again. We had 4 young papillons and 2 old shelties so not hard dogs but still just a lot of chaos a lot of the time. Then we had 5 papillons and Ada a while and that was pretty chaotic but 99% of the issues were because Ada had no training and shrieked 24/7. One thing though is that I would not be able to train as much and do as many classes as I do now if I had that many dogs.

I moved out and left my mom with 3 dogs. Took one. She got another dog, I got two more. My move didn't turn out so well after a few months and I moved back in...so there was never a 4-5 jump haha. I doubt we would have gone over 4 if I hadn't moved out. We've bounced back and forth between 7 and 12 (12 was with quickly placed fosters). It's not so bad..just be aware of the commitment you are making. Make sure you place the dogs you intend to place.

$$$. And private rentals. When I was looking in TX I offered to pay additional deposits. I did find someone that didn't really care and just had me pay a $100 deposit per dog. I put quite a bit of money away though just in case I had to bribe someone. I wouldn't even deal with a rental agency.

I just want to chime in to make sure you have considered what it might be like to have 5 dogs when they are all entering old age. I mean if you have 6 years apart on your new one that seems like quite a bit of time but if you already have 4 that are similar ages that can get really expensive if they need medical help around similar times. This year has been incredibly taxing on our wallets because of 1 dog, 1 cat and 1 bird. All in all... We must have spent ~7 grand, and that is probably on the low end of my estimate. Two were seniors and got cancer this year (both parrot and dog were 8) and the cat had a freak accident. The cat has always been costing us vet bills for injuries but the dog and parrot were very healthy and easy keepers until this year.

I think it is important to just keep in mind that having multiple seniors can get really expensive in terms of vet bills. You just never know when an accident will happen or when an animal will get ill. So besides factoring in the money for food and equipment, definitely consider how much you have to put towards medical care and how far you are willing to go to help them.

The first question is more-or-less answered below. We have resumes on our dogs. They have titles proving they have good behavior and are under control. We crate train and explicitly explain what that means (NO unsupervised free time in the house). We let them meet the dogs if they like and we throw extra $$$ at them as well. Our rental house (we can only rent houses) is currently for sale so we have random people coming through all the time to view it - we've made sure the house and yard are clean and that we haul all the dogs out during the showing. The landlord was thankful enough to sign an addendum that allows us to stay an extra 2 months - we are moving out of state so this was *really* important.

We train a LOT. Luckily both me and my fiance (that's new!) love it so we train every night (unless one of us is sick or something). We also teach dog training classes so that is a good way of making sure several are rotated through. For example, this last week I handled his BC pup and my Corgi at a class and then after class we ran my GSD and his Corgi in the ring on our own time. It just works for us - we know it's unusual though.

Yup, this is what we do

The jump from 4-5 was not hard for us, but we have pretty easy dogs, they are very well behaved The most we've ever had here is 9, our current 8 and a dog we've dog sat here and there for ppl

This is what I was thinking. I have 5 dogs, but I own my home.

The hardest jump for me was going from 3 to 4. Dog #4 was Rory Dog #5 was Emma. Having 5 isn't much different from 3 or 4, at least for me.

The hardest jump I think is going from 2 to 3. after that I think it's all just cake lol

With two, you have a pair, you can rent in quite a few places, walk them together pretty easily, board them together etc.. any more than that, especially renting, you are going to hit some speed bumps.

but in my experience, it's not harder doing 4 or 5. other than the fact that it's an odd number, which bugs me lol but if you dogs play in pairs, it might be a third-wheel kind of situation
It's a little harder to calculate food wise. 4 plus the usual 2-cup thing seems to translate easier into the usually lbs of bags of food than 5.

Oh and holding leashes if you DO walk together. With 4, 2 leashes in each hand kind of evens things out.
With 5, there is always 3 dogs on one side of you.

Crating. If you have 4 you can just stack 2 crates on top of two others. 5 presents a weird shape problem as to where to put the 5th crate.

I've been told the magic number is three - once you go over three, it's pretty much even. But I think that magic number varies for people. I think it also really depends on the dogs.

Like Auggie, Pepper, and Payton. Pepper is happy to just snuggle up next to me, maybe chew on a tennis ball. The boys run around playing together being nuts and she just hangs out next to me, like "loooooove yooooooou" the whole time LOL. She almost doesn't even count, she's just so low key and not demanding at all. So given that those are my existing three, I'm not worried at all about adding a fourth dog. Three was going to be my max number, and after #2 turned out to be Pepper, I decided to change it to make room for her... given she wasn't really what I was looking for. I'm definitely not worried about ultimately having four with the three I have right now.

It also helps that all of mine are good in crates, so if I ever need a break or somebody needs a time-out, I can just pop them in the crate for a while and let everybody chill out.

So I think it really depends on the dogs you have. BUT I do agree that the challenge of having a lot of seniors at the same time is a really good one. I also wouldn't just be worried about how hard it might be on the wallet, but realistically, if you have a bunch of oldies who might be going pretty close to each other, you might also need to worry about if your young dog who always had a full house could quickly end up without any companions... I think there's a lot of timing challenges involved with your current situation, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

No, housing is really the main issue I'm thinking of, especially since we don't know where we're going to be after graduation. But, on that note, if we're going to have trouble renting we're already going to have trouble renting with four dogs. Don't think a fifth addition will make much difference there. However, that is why I'm definitely going to be waiting until at least the fall of next year or spring of 2014 before doing anything - I want to make sure we're able to have a place that will let us have at least the four dogs before even considering adding a fifth.

I do know that in this area at least, it shouldn't be impossible to find a place that would allow multiple dogs. Most rental agencies would be out (max is two), but as said above, private rentals. Where Mike is leasing currently, I'm pretty sure his landlord wouldn't care at all as long as the money was paid for the deposit...but I'm also fairly certain we won't be staying in this area.

Having four dogs wasn't planned...at most, we would have had three. Chloe, Cynder, and New Puppy. Inheriting Gracie and Cooper wasn't on anyone's to do list. But now that they're here, if we're already going to have to try to rent with four dogs, would renting with five be that much different?

I'm hoping that there is enough of an age gap it shouldn't be too big of a problem. Cynder and Chloe are similar ages, Gracie and Cooper are similar ages, but there is about a three or four year gap between the two sets. Blackie and Rose were three years apart and I actually really liked that. They were similar enough in age to have similar activity/stamina levels, but far enough apart that health issues due to old age occurred at different times. We also won't have any other animals other than the dogs, unless the ferrets and rats manage to live another two years (of which I'm doubtful considering the rats are already around 1.5 years and the ferrets both have cancer), so that will help ease the financial burden a bit.

Either way, I won't be rushing into anything and if getting a fifth dog won't work, it won't work...but if it isn't going to be impossible/impractical to the extreme, I'd like to find a way to make it work.

Luckily, the way the current dog dynamics are, a third wheel thing would actually be a good idea. Chloe and Cynder aren't crated, and Cooper and Gracie are crated together, so we'd still be at two crates with Puppy.

Cooper and Gracie are buds, and Cynder is kind of included into that number, but she is more of a loner than anything. Chloe tries to play with all three of them, but Cynder is hit in miss, Gracie freaks out, and she and Cooper are still trying to figure out how to play with one another considering Cooper is 8 pounds and she's 50. If anything, Puppy would be a companion for Chloe. That way we'd have the Gracie and Cooper duo, the Chloe and Puppy duo (and she can play with Puppy to her hearts content), and then Cynder gets to be her loner self.

Leash walking, it would probably be small dogs and big dogs going out together. There is no way Gracie could keep up with Chloe on our walks anyway (we go at a very fast clip), so they're already going to have to go for walks at separate times.

This, particularly the bolded part.

I have 6 right now. But 5 are super easy. Sport wants to eat Kaiden (see its NOT a JRT being a problem!!) and annoys the heck out of the whippets. But the other 5 are great. Right now as I type they are free chillin around me. We were outside puttering (emptying water troughs, fixing the lawn mower wheel..) and they were all loose happy together.

So those 5 are super easy for the most part. But if we only had Kaiden and Sport it would be stressful. Heck Dash and Sport would be stressful and there is no eating.

I've had 5, and it wasn't a big jump. For me, the big jump is going from one or two to 3+, especially since they have to be rotated and separated.

6 was another big jump for me both times. Two to three was also a jump. 3, 4, 5, feel about the same. Personally, I never want 6 dogs again.

I went from 1 to 3 to 5. Then to 4, where we've been for a few years. With five it was nice because we had three little dogs (under 25lbs), one medium (50lbs) and one large (90lbs). The three little ones we always said equaled one large, so we really only had three dogs. I used to walk them all at the same time or take them out it small groups.

Right now we're not the most peaceful household at 4 with the girls trying to constantly eat each other, so I'm sure going back to five would be super stressful.

In the future I think my max is 1-2 but I do see the appeal or having multiple dogs. I love walking multiple dogs and I love, love group pictures.