James Werrell: Are you really sure you want to adopt a puppy?

A final word about Brody the puppy: If the story of this pup that was shot 18 times with a BB gun has inspired you to adopt a dog, take a minute or two to think about it.

Brody, a 6-week-old Lab who was named by the vets who cared for him, was bleeding heavily from his wounds when rescuers brought him in for treatment. But puppies can be hardy creatures, and this one apparently will thrive even with 18 BBs stuck in him, which the veterinarians said would be too risky to remove.

And the best part of the story is that Brody has been adopted by a loving family. That happy ending, however was practically inevitable. After The Herald ran the dog’s tale online and on the newspaper’s front page, hundreds of people called volunteering to give Brody a new home.

Officials with local animal protection agencies have urged people who might have been moved to adopt Brody to take a look at the hundreds of other cats and dogs available for adoption. That’s an important message: If you want a pet, there’s one waiting for you out there.

But you need to take a deep breath and think about it first. Are your loins girded for the addition of a dog to your family?

Brody is an impossibly cute puppy, a furry love magnet, an irresistible little cuddle bear. But from the looks of him, in a few months he will be a great big bundle of hard-to-cuddle canine.

That’s the thing: Cute puppies turn into dogs. No matter how many times you repeat that, some people never get it.

This fact of nature has a number of repercussions. For example, if you invite a puppy to sleep on your bed, eventually you will be sharing your bed with a dog, often a much bigger animal than the one you first volunteered to sleep with and one that might be prone to hogging more than his share of the bed.

And something else: A snoring puppy is precious; a snoring dog isn’t.

The same goes for drooling.

It’s also good to know ahead of time that dogs are messy. Even the most fastidious dog – and most of them are not fastidious at all – will think nothing of tracking mud and gunk onto your furniture, bringing sticks and other interesting debris into the living room or rolling in foul-smelling muck and perfuming your house with its essence.

Dogs also like to lick themselves a lot – often for long periods at a time and usually within earshot. Yelling, “Would you please just stop that?!” will not make them stop.

House training can be frustrating even when it goes relatively well. Even with the smartest, most obedient puppy in the world, there will be mistakes. And mistakes have to be cleaned up by someone, which can become a point of contention in any household:

“I got the last one, it’s your turn.”

“Yeah, but he was trying to tell you he wanted to go out. You weren’t paying attention.”

“Hey, watch it, he’s squatting again!”

Teething also can be irksome. How much do you like your shoes?

And then there’s shedding. And barking. And running away.

But here’s the thing, dog lovers put up with any number of annoying traits because, well, they just like dogs. And if you think you might be one of those people, please act on that impulse to adopt a dog who needs a home.

Dogs undeniably can be a pain in the neck for an infinite variety of reasons. Then again, who else is ever that happy to see you walk through the door?

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 12:37 PM with the headline "James Werrell: Are you really sure you want to adopt a puppy?."