Holidays, especially Christmas time, are the best time to give your loved one, child or significant other a gift of a puppy. You hide them away the night before at a friends’ house, and just like Santa, bring the small animal home and place them under the Christmas tree. The first couple months allows you and your family to enjoy your new friend, you play with them, take pictures for your Instagram and bask in the excitement that comes with a new puppy. Until suddenly, like most animals do – they get bigger. 

Upon realizing that your new Christmas present is not going to stay a puppy forever, you begin to contemplate the responsibility that comes with having a dog for a long time. The average life span across breeds of dogs is roughly 7 to 12 years old, according to petmd.com. Dogs require vet visits, daily exercise and a home until their final day. 

You may think you have bitten off more than you can chew so you begin to try to find a new home for your little friend. You start with close family, but with no luck there you decide to give the dog to the local animal shelter or sell it on a local yard sale site. Sadly, your little friend will most likely end up in a shelter, until some day, if they’re lucky, a family comes along that knows the true effort that goes into having a new pet and takes your Christmas present to live a life in a forever home. Although this story ends with a semi-happy ending, there are about 6.5 million animals sheltered each year and out of those, 3.3 million are dogs. From that 3.3 million, 670,000 dogs are euthanized each year, according to aspca.org. 

So this holiday season, when you see the dogs in bows dressed up in Christmas sweaters and think it will be a good idea to buy the dog, consider if you are willing to give this new puppy a forever home. Also, think about whether or not you want to pay a bunch of money for a dog from the pet store, or substantially less to give a dog from the shelter a forever home, which will lower the previous mentioned statistics on the amount of dogs in shelters and reduce the amounts of dogs euthanized per year. 

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