Hi,
My name is Melissa. Im interested in perhaps adding a Great Pyreneese to my family. I have a few other breeds Im looking into also. But I do have some questions about Great Pyrenees. I was wondering if you Pyr owners could answer for me?
1~How are they with children? I have a 4 year old son. I will never leave them unsupervised,and never let Shane (My son) tease the dog in any way, but I would like a dog that will get along with him and play with him.
2~How are they with other critters?
3~How much exersize a day do they need as adults?
4~What aresome health problems Great Pyreneese can have? How do you prevent them,and/or how they are treated
5~What are some pros and cons?
6~What sort of grooming and how often do they need?
Feel free to add anything else you think I should know that I didnt add. Feel free to brag or vent lol
Thank you 
~Melissa~
It seems like people have pretty much covered everything but I wanted to put in my two cents.
First of all, Jack is GREAT with kids. He's so gentle and friendly and every kid he meets immediately hugs and squeezes him and he couldn't care less! He gets called "a big teddy bear" by every child we encounter and they all want to take him home. I trust him completely with children. Our greater swiss mountain dog is also great with kids but she doesn't seem to have that Pyr understanding that they are small and weak and can be knocked down easily, or that they get overwhelmed if she gets in their face. Jack just seems to know that automatically.
We have three cats and other than the occasional puppy chase he is great with them. If we just said "no" in a stern voice when he would start to chase them he stopped right away. One of our cats and he frequently lay near each other and sleep.
When we pass other dogs/cats in the neighborhood he barely even glances at them, even though often times dogs are charging and barking along all the invisible fence lines in our neighborhood (we aren't allowed to have real fences in our city). Speaking of fences, while Jack isn't a runner by any means, I do think he would wander off if not heavily supervised while outside, offleash. We allow him offleash if we are right there with him and are watching him carefully, otherwise he's not outside by himself at all.
As for exercise, we walk our dogs twice a day, for about 30-45 minutes (2-3 miles) each time. That is sufficient to wear them out so that they are, for the most part, not running around the house continually. They still have playtime and get the "crazies" now and then but in comparison to other breeds, Pyrs seem WAY more mellow than most, even through the puppy stages. Everyone is always saying "is he ALWAYS this calm?!?!?" And luckily, our answer is "Yes!"
As for grooming Jack did "blow coat" in the spring and he was shedding like crazy. We got the furminator comb (
www.furminator .com) and it works WONDERS! Other than that month or so, we just brush him once a week and he stays very clean and fluffy, with fairly little effort. Everyone thinks because they're white and have so much hair that they are hard to keep clean, but even when he gets really filthy you just wait and hour and brush him out and miraculously he's white again. We do give him a bath once a month or so with a whitening shampoo just to get his paws and elbows back to being snow white, but besides that he's pretty easy to groom. We also trim his double dews every 2 weeks, which he doesn't mind at all, and clean out his ears weekly. That's about it. We've never had to trim his nails (or our other dogs) because we walk them so much - another perk of getting plenty of exercise!
Well I think those are the highlights! As for cons, other than the common large/giant breed health issues and the "coat blowing" I can't really think of any. Some people say they're stubborn or hard to train but I think you just have to realize that they are bred over centuries to be independent thinkers so sometimes you can see the "why should I" behind their eyes, but if you're consistent and firm they learn quickly and don't give you much trouble.
