Living arrangements

There's really nothing complicated about the living arrangements for a half dog. You just need to agree on things between the two households.

In our experience the dog is surprisingly good at adapting and remembering the “rules” of each house. Look cute at my parents house and someone might go throw you a ball. Look cute at my house and a child will smother you in hugs. My parents are earlier risers than me - and the dog expects it. Our London life involves a very doggy-social park. My parents' life involves walks on the woods. The dog seems to positively thrive on both. I worked very hard on socialising her as a puppy, since I knew this would be an issue for me. I also did a lot of “townie” desensitisation by exposing her to traffic, train platforms and so on. Simply not relevant where my parents live.

You’ll need to agree on a diet - including whether the dog gets treats. Our dog’s diet isn’t identical in her two homes. My parents give her a biscuit at bed time, which I don’t. We occasionally give her tasty left overs, my parents don’t (cooking for two, it’s not really relevant to them.) But neither of us would feed her from the table - I suspect it would be quite difficult for a dog to adapt to that if one house did it but the other didn’t want to. As long as both halves agree, it's pretty straightforward.

But her main food is exactly the same. She’s on a dry food regime which is by far the easiest for a mobile dog. She often travels with a few pre-measured meal portions decanted into unused poo-bags. Wet food would be trickier, but perfectly do-able if that were necessary. And some dogs are happier that way. For the same reason of giving her continuity - which is a good thing digestively too! - we agreed on a specific brand of food and flavour. That way we can keep stock in both houses. Another thing to not have to transport. And another element of continuity for the dog. That’s the essence of the half dog plan - keep as much as possible as consistent as possible, so the dog feels secure.

We share "rules" as far as possible, to give the dog a reasonable chance of understanding what's expected of her. She is not allowed on furniture, or upstairs in either of our houses. Your dog, your house, your rules - but some amount of consistency between the two households is really going to help the dog!

I suspect there’d be some ability to be a little flexible if your rules were a bit different. Our dog clearly does have some understanding of each home as a distinct place and to some extent adjusts her behaviour. But crucially, if the dog can’t adjust, both households need to align - otherwise there’s human conflict and canine confusion.