German shepherd vs Belgian malinois
I'm faced with a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enema (that's not a typo--the situation's painful).
The problem
My beautiful girl, Ursula (she of the photo), has lymphoma and won't be with us for very much longer. Her little brother (not by blood), Thorben, is very attached to her. I don't think he'll cope on his own, so we're going to have to get another dog fairly quickly after Ursula goes. I honestly don't feel much like looking at other dogs at the moment, but I realize I need to get my mind straight while she's still in good health or I'm going to end up doing something stupid for the sake of Thorben.
The questions
My questions are to people who have parented both GSDs and mals:
- How much busier are mals than GSDs?
- If I'm used to GSDs, will I cope with a mal without traumatizing the poor dog?
The background
My point of reference with dogs is that I grew up with GSDs and have raised only GSDs. My heart won't be able to take another GSD girl right now, so I'm looking at other breeds. I've been told that the average mal is like a GSD on meth, but now I'm wondering whether that's an accurate assessment. My vet actually suggested a mal, so I'm starting to think I might be overly cautious. I know she wouldn't have suggested it if she didn't think I'd be a good mal parent. I've taken my dogs to her for more than a decade, and she loves my two so much that she wanders out to the car to go play with them when I pop in to buy something.
We have a huge yard (including a piece of stream that runs through one corner), live in a rural hamlet that's so rural that three cars on the road is considered heavy traffic and I know every single person in my neighbourhood by name and have been over to their house for at least coffee, and live about five minutes from a deserted 6 kilometre stretch of beach. I take my dogs to training classes and train them myself, and I socialize them really well.
In case anyone worries about me not bonding with a new dog or being too hamstrung by grief to properly care for a dog, I could be half dead myself and I'd still bond with a dog and care for it properly. My brain deals with what's in front of it and what needs doing, no matter the circumstances. Some of us are just wired that way. I do think I need to find direction before things get bad, though, because I suspect I won't be thinking very clearly when Ursula starts to decline.