"When a man gets old he needs a good dog not a wife"

My father passed away in 1985. This is one of the things he told me within 5 years of his passing on. My father was valedictorian of his High school Class and my mother was not an intellectual but was always very calm and commonsensical and very intuitive. I'm like both of them and also myself.

But, I understood what he was trying to tell me at the time. Personally, if you are with someone compatible with you in enough ways, a wife is much better than a dog but I suppose if you think like this maybe a dog is important too.

I prefer both to have a good wife and to have one or more good dogs (preferably a dog for myself and a dog for my wife too) now that all our children have grown up and live either in another state or country than we do.

I prefer a bigger dog (over 70 pounds) whereas my wife prefers a corgi (which I also like a lot) if they are over 2 years old. I can remember our corgi puppy we got for our daughter around 2003 I think it was and how much trouble she was until she was about 2 when she became a really amazing dog in adulthood. She whined as a puppy a lot and chewed up the corner wall in the kitchen and kept us awake at night a lot. But, from 2 to 15 years of age when she finally passed on she was amazing for all members of my family.

MY dog we got about 2002 or 2000 and he was a mix of Australian Shepard and Long Hair German Shepard which makes for a truly wonderful dog that is extremely intelligent and amazing. I really miss my dog who passed on in I think 2015 or 2016. Then we got an older Yellow lab that had bonded with our corgi but when she passed on a year or two ago he went too within a month or so which was very hard to be without any dogs at all ever since. We tried to raise a purebred German Shepard puppy but he was too much for my wife because she wasn't alpha enough for him. So, when he got her by the neck (no blood) I realized this had gone far enough and he now lives with a German Shepard Trainer in Las Vegas. His Grandfather was world Champion Shutz Hund and my wife was unfortunately his mother and his prey at the same time. Great Dog but my wife wasn't able to be alpha enough to safely keep him which broke both our hearts because we both had bonded a lot with this dog.

My father had a German Shepard that was between 125 and 150 pounds when he made the title statement. But, when my father passed on my mother couldn't handle the dog that became forlorn without my father and stayed in his dog house and growled at my mother. So, she returned the big German Shepard to my father's sister whose dog Heidi was King's (my father's dogs mother).

So, hopefully the right dogs will eventually come along for my wife and I. But, we also travel a lot now so I'm not sure how fair that is to two dogs to have to either be dog sat or travel with us now that we are mostly retired.