John and I have two dogs (brother and sister) that are mid-sized. We both grew up with dogs and we consider them part of our family. I was talking with a family member and they suggested we get rid of them when the baby comes. I was taken aback. We are committed dog owners and love our pups so that had never crossed our minds. We did talk about how they bark at everyone who walks by our house and at squirrels/critters and how we will handle this with a sleeping baby. The only instance I could think of as to why we would find another home for our dogs is if our baby was allergic to them. We agree the health of our child is far more important than keeping our pups. I just pray that will never be the case. Raising our dogs has been very eye opening on some of our parenting techniques. We are both very structured people (both engineers by training) and people are always surprised at how well our dogs obey. They are restricted to an area in our home, which was important to me. We spent a lot of time training them and teaching them tricks. I am working on our autobiography right now for our home study and I get to talk about the fun times we have taking our dogs to Lake Michigan and playing with tennis balls in the back yard. They are quite entertaining and they crack us up by how expressive they are.