Dog advice

[ALawPoker]

This is Jaeger:






He's a 1.5 year old Rottweiler/German Shepherd mix. My house mate and I adopted him last year, with the intention that he was my house mate's dog (meaning, he would keep him when we parted ways). But, long story short, my house mate is an idiot. He never took great care of the dog and I picked up the slack, so naturally the dog thought of me as his owner. Now my house mate is moving to Germany, and he can't take him (again, he's an idiot), so I am keeping the dog.

I'm not at a point in my life where I feel having a dog is a great idea. But Jaeger is pretty attached to me, so I'm pretty sure agreeing to keep him was definitely the right thing to do.

But anyways, I really like my dog. I want him to be as happy and healthy as possible. But I worry that my lifestyle (playing poker for a living) is a burden in some ways.

First issue: My hours are strange and erratic. Generally I sleep something like 4 a.m. to noon. This isn't ideal for the dog in the first place, but the bigger problem is that it's inconsistent. Sometimes my hours will sort of rotate. How bad is this for a dog's mentality?

Second issue: When I'm playing, I'm basically in my bed room with the door closed. He is a very dependent dog, so he needs to be in there with me. I of course take enough time out of my day to get him his exercise and play and all that; that isn't the issue. But I just feel like sitting in a closed room for 8+ hours a day isn't great for him. I really need the door closed though, because I live with other people, and my personality is such that I don't like distraction when I'm trying to focus.

And then the third one: This occurs the least often, but it's the one I'm most sure is a problem when it does occur, and the issue I'm most hoping for feedback on. When I'm having a rough session and am noticeably distressed, or outright angry, it really bothers him. He'll move to the other end of the room and sit and sort of stare at me intently. Sometimes he'll even shake a little.

I'm not talking about full fledged wall pounding temper tantrums. Just common "aw [censored] c'mon" reactions in a days work.

What's interesting is, he (like probably any dog) will often automatically assume the sit position when he sees you with some sort of treat that he wants. Like I said, we adopted him from the pound. He's very friendly towards even strangers, so he isn't afraid of people. But this sequence of events (seeing me get annoyed and then deciding that he should move away from me and sit) leads me to wonder if his original owner would sometimes get angry and abuse him.

(Person getting angry. [censored]. Let me give person what person wants. Sit.)

So I dunno. Even if my abuse theory is wrong, I feel like him seeing me angry or stressed is not good for him. He needs to see me as a strong leader; not unstable. To him, I am annoyed for no rational reason.

Any advice as to how to react here? I don't want to be too comforting, because I don't want to reward the reaction. But at the same time, I feel guilty just ignoring him. I usually look at him and say something like "it's ok" in a soft voice, and tell him to come and then pet him.


I dunno. I'm sure this reads like a ramble. I'm probably over thinking a lot of things. But I just feel like my lifestyle is so quirky that there's a really good chance it is bad for dogs. Of course, the plus side is that my schedule is flexible. So I can take a lot of time to play with him at the park whenever the weather is nice, and stuff like that. But I really want to be as good of an owner as I can be, so I guess I'm looking for any and all advice that you guys might have. I'm also down for just talking about dogs in general, if that's the direction the thread heads in.