I love maltese but they are too tiny...My DD hada Llaso Apso and he was a doll baby.

Good luck with you search and choice.

They are incredible dogs but sadly the Bouviers I have known rarely made it past 6yo.

Check out petfinder.com if you are looking for a specific breed. That is where my last pooch came from. I've never gotten the same breed twice because like you said I'm always worried that I'd expect the new dog to be as wonderful and that isn't not be fair and even just looking at pictures of Akitas makes me miss my old boy.

Good luck, definitely keep us posted and we will require pictures.

This is why I'm leaning towards a poodle or poodle mix. The grooming that we had to do with TinyMonsters was a bit expensive. And we would neglect to get him done sometimes. Once, he went awhile without grooming, so we took him to a place down the street from us. The owners were a bit nuts.

They did an excellent job on grooming Tiny and we told them so. Best he'd ever looked. A few months later, we called them to get another grooming for Tiny. They refused. Gave me some craptastic excuse that because we didnt bring him back a few weeks after his first grooming that we "insulted them". So, now they wouldnt do his grooming. I think they went out of business. Must have been insulted too many times I guess.

We managed to find a groomer who was not a whackjob, but she kept changing jobs, so we had to pretty much follow her all over Omaha every year or so. At least Tiny liked getting groomed by her.

Hopefully we wont get a dog that needs grooming every two or three months. I want something that I might be able to handle bathing it on my own. If I get a pug, I know my aunt would be ok with giving it a bath for us. (she used to have a pug)

I'd like either a poodle, or a pug, or a mixture of the two, or maybe a lhasa apso...except the lhasa would need more grooming. (I'd just be getting it shaved instead of prettied up)

Hopefully we'll luck out and get a healthy dog. All three of the dogs I've owned had health problems. First dog was a yorkie...he went blind and had kidney problems.

Second dog was our poodle. He was epileptic...and went blind.

third dog was Tiny, and he was the sickest. When he was a puppy before we got him, he nearly died the week he was born. His first year that we had him, he was fine, then he started to have stomach problems. So we had to give him tummy medicine with his food every day. Even that didnt help him all the time.

He had problems with bloat (gastric torsion) and even tho I always caught him in the pre-bloat stages and got him to the vet right away, he never got bad enough that his tummy would twist.

He was a chronic puker. (ewww!)

He got poisoned by an exterminator who ignored me when I said where to place the mouse poison. (specifically told him not to put it in Tiny's backyard where he could get to it)

Kenneled Tiny once, and the nephew of the kennel owner BEAT Tiny half to death. (yes we reported it) I'm pretty sure Tiny had kidney damage from that. Tiny died a few years after he was beaten, his kidneys just quit working one day. I think he was poisoned by a neighbor, but the vet never found anything and we never had him do a necropsy. (I wasnt thinking too clearly that day)

Tiny was our best dog, even if he was never the healthiest. I think I wanted that bouvier puppy just because I missed Tiny and was hoping that I'd get him back by getting another bouvier.

We need a small, but tough, smart dog. Something that wont be begging me to walk it when the MS trolls want me facedown on the floor. I know while it's a puppy, I probably wont have that luxury.

at least my dad is letting me have fun with the dog shopping. Said that I'll probably get to pick out the puppy, and have the naming rights. (I named our poodle, and I edited Tiny's name. His groomer had named him Tiny Tim. I renamed him TinyMonsters...I swear he had extra personalities. More than one dog in his body...maybe like 5. So, his name was plural and had the "s" on the end of it)

We were hoping for at least 12yrs with Tiny. We got 9yrs. Tiny's dad (Teddy) lived to be 14yrs old. I think was 11 or 12 when he was mated with Tiny's mom (CookieMonsters).

CookieMonsters died when she was 8 or 9, I think. I think when she died, she had similar symptoms as Tiny did when he died. His older brother Frankie, and at least two of his littermates died when they were 7 or 8. Of similar circumstances that his mom died of. So, it could be possible that there was some congenital problem with a lot of the dogs from his litter. So, they must have gotten their health problems from their mom...Tiny's dad's worst health problem was blindness from old age. (as far as I know)

I saw a bouvier on the Westminster dog show the other day (it got second place in the herding group! yay!) and it looked just like Tiny. Made me cry.

So, yeah, I think I need a different breed of dog, because if I get one that looks like Tiny, I'll compare Tiny to it all the time. So, my next dog needs to be his own individual self.

I have a list of small dog breeds that I'm researching. I dont want any teacup dogs. I used to have a yorkie when I was little. (parents got him a year before I was born) and he was not a teacup dog. I hate that in the past 40yrs that they've bred yorkies to be so small. They now look like they're too small to do the job that they were originally bred for. Yorkie Terriers were bred to go into holes and kill vermin. Now I think the vermin are probably bigger than most Yorkies are now.

I may do a poodle again, just because I know poodles are great hunters (at least ours was) and I think that if I'm allergic, I might do better with a poodle. Not that I want it to hunt or anything, but I want it to at least be able to do Tiny's job of keeping my room/house safe from any mice that may try to set up housekeeping here. (we had a problem once or twice, and Tiny was better than a cat! and Tiny didnt bring me any evidence, but I knew when he was tracking something)

I dont expect any dog to actually do any of the things I'm hoping it'll do. But if they do...great! I really do miss having a pet tho. Having a dog to pet and play with and train with was just a lot of fun, and I miss that. Especially the training part of it. It was fun teaching a dog to do things.