Child substitutes

Once again, anyone who knows Stuart and I will be aware that we are firmly against having children. We have some shared and some individual reasons for this, but fortunately for a happy future, in the end we agree - no rugrats! Now, don't get the impression that we don't like kids. I love to babysit my niece and nephew and watching Stuart be a mobile playground for the twins is a riot. We just prefer to interact with them on more of a "loaner" basis.

That doesn't mean that we don't have nurturing instincts either, and lately we've really been wanting to get a dog. We both have very specific requirements for a dog: endurance, medium-large size, friendly temperament without bouncing on every human within running distance, not likely to take off after every sound/movement and takes training well. After doing some research, we think we may have found what we'd like: a Black Russian Terrier.

They have been bred up fairly recently in Russia as guard dogs and are still used by the army there. We still have to do some research and being big dogs, it'll probably have to wait until we can afford a house, but at least this way we can dream...

You can see pics and get a bit more information here or here.