2nd Cairn

[susang]

My Sammy is 2 1/2 years old. He was a rescue and we've been together 4 months. I want to get another Cairn and was wondering if a male or female will be a better match, or does it matter? He is neutered, house trained, and doggy door trained. Thanks.

[brin145]

I am by no means an expert. I was just polling breeders with this very question not long ago- before we added our 2nd one. From about 10 different breeders, I got a variety of answers- mostly that it didn't matter since the current male is neutered. And if you get another male assuming he would also be neutered. I did get 2 replies that a female might be a better match. They gave no specific reason for this. We got another male, and I was leaning towards the "it doesn't matter if they are both neutered." The breeder we bought from had two males to choose from, so that was an easy choice.

[cairnrescueleague]

The combination I have the most trouble with is two females. If they don't get along, they REALLY don't get along, and they NEVER let bygones be bygones. I find that neutered males usually get along well, unless you have an inidividual dog that's dog aggressive. I'm actually fostering an intact male right now who can't be neutered until he recovers from heartworm treatment, and he and my two neutered males are actually doing quite well together. I have heard that the new dog should be younger than the resident dog, but I haven't found that makes much difference. Barring aggressive tendencies, I find that cairns are like people, they have their likes and dislikes, but IMHO, watch out for the female grudge matches.

[curlyantillysmom]

I have a 2yr old cairn male and I had to oppornity to get a free cairn terrier female. I took my cairn to meet with the little female cairn to see if they got along with each other. If they did not get along sorry if they got along great. They both got along great and off we went. Tilly is 8 months now and they are bot connected at the hip.

Jane