We love our dogs, and I can't imagine being without one (or two) but they do put limitations on life to a point. We don't have children (no interest thanks) and I work from home, so someone is here with them during the day, but for extended travel, it can make things difficult. We spent 5 weeks in Australia earlier this year, and we only had one dog at the time, and he split his time with two other people who agreed to look after him. In the past we have tried to get people we know to come and live in the house with the dog, so they are both dog and house sitting.
If you have a wide network of people who you think would help with these situations, it might be easier, but we often struggle to find someone to look after the dogs even for a day or so when we want to take even a short trip that the dogs can't come on.
And speaking of children, I can't say what the right age is to bring a dog into the home, but I can say that when my nephew brings his kids around at Xmas or whatever, our dogs hate it. The small kids don't know when to stop sometimes, and I'll often find one dog off on his own hiding from them...
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