I got my puppy at 8 weeks old and have had him for a week and a half. I really like him but I'm considering returning him to the breeder. Here's my situation:I wanted a GSD for a long time. I did tons of research on dogs. I originally wanted to get a shelter dog but eventually decided on a puppy instead. I thought I was ready and got on a wait list for a puppy.Fast forward about a year later and my life has changed completely. I am now working full time as a software developer and am living with my fiance in a very small apartment. He just got his first full time job as a Web developer but hasn't started yet. Then we finally get our puppy. I thought we were prepared for this but clearly we weren't.The first few nights I tried crating at night. I had spent a lot of time that day getting the puppy used to the crate, but he still spent the whole night screaming. He did the same thing three nights in a row. This was a huge problem for us because I had insomnia years ago that after working on it for several years I was finally able to sleep peacefully through the night, so I'm not too keen on going back to not sleeping again. And even worse, my fiance has epilepsy and being overtired is a potential seizure trigger for him. So we gave up on crate training and put him in our bedroom at night and when we leave the apartment so we could sleep.This solved the crying problem but now we are struggling with potty training and destructive chewing. He pees in the house almost every day. We started working on leaving him alone in the bedroom for increasing periods of time since I had to go back to work yesterday and my fiance is starting his job next Monday. We can leave him alone for about 3-4 hours now, which is great because I planned to come home from work during lunch to take him for a potty break and play with him for a bit. But now two days in a row he has been ripping up the carpet when left in the room. That worries be because he's not even teething yet.He's also been chasing my cat, who is 17 years old and my first pet that I'm very attached to. And because he hates the crate we have to constantly supervise him when we are home with no breaks at all.Everything else has been going good. Training is going well and for a pup his age he doesn't bite much. But me and my fiance have been so stressed out from raising the puppy that we're still barely sleeping. I feel miserable because our lives finally got on track when he got his job and now I feel like we ruined it by getting a puppy we weren't ready for. The last 2 years were very stressful for both of us and just after all of the stress finally goes away, now it's back.What should we do? Can we reasonably care for this 10 week old puppy with us both working? I'm worried that we're not able to provide a good home for the puppy because he must spend 8 hours a day alone and because of our stress levels. Crating him would help but I don't think it's right to crate a puppy for 8 hours during the day and then possibly another 8 hours at night. Will this get better soon? I feel like it's only going to get worse once teething starts.What makes it so hard is that he's such a sweet puppy and I think he would grow up to be a great dog for us. But I'm not sure we can manage him until he grows up. My parents think we should return him but we're both heartbroken because we are attached to the dog, but don't feel like we can care for him. via /r/dogs http://ift.tt/2rjKUsj
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