When the conversation at home turned to getting our then nine-year-old daughter, Keira, a puppy, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. At the time, I was commuting four hours a day from Miller Place on Long Island to my office in Lower Manhattan, getting home well after dinner, and didn’t feel like forfeiting what little energy I had left to replacing puppy potty pads. But, I reasoned, having a dog would mean routine walks, and maybe that would be the linchpin to getting our whole family outside more often.
As my wife, Erica, and I looked into the attributes we wanted in a dog, like size, demeanor, and, maybe most important of all, low shedability, a labradoodle checked all the boxes. We brought Chloe home and, not long after, my commute went…
