What Nobody Tells You Before Getting a Westie (From Someone Who Absolutely Did Not Do Her Research)

My parents had a Westie, she was small, calm and very cuddly which really made me think this is the perfect breed for me. Small enough to fit in a carry-on bag, cuddly enough for quiet evenings in, and calm enough to suit my introverted self. So when it was time to choose a dog, a breed that I wanted to start my life together with, I looked at her and thought — yes, that’s my dog, that’s what I want. No actual research on Google, no vet consultations, no late night rabbit holes on Reddit groups. Just a feeling and a decision made in about four seconds.

Four years later I’m still discovering things about this breed that would have been genuinely useful to know before I brought her home. So this is the post I wish had existed (or maybe it actually did exist, but since I didn’t do any research at all, I wish I had actually read before deciding to bring a westie home) not written by an expert, but by someone who is very much still in the middle of figuring it out.

Something I’ve never actually seen written about honestly (or again, just haven’t stumbled upon since I haven’t been researching this enough at all): sometimes I get frustrated with her, and then I feel terrible about it.

I’m in a rush, or I’m having a bad day, and she’s doing her own thing, at her own pace and rhythm, doing whatever she feels like doing at that exact moment and I get impatient. Frustrated. Forgetting that it’s actually me who needs to allow her to be a dog and let her do things the way she needs to do it.

And then immediately I feel awful. I’ve genuinely spent evenings sitting with that guilt, wondering if I’m doing this right, if she knows I love her, if I’m actually a good dog mum or just someone who took on a living creature without fully thinking it through.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I also don’t see it talked about much – maybe because everyone’s presenting the highlight reel version of their life with their dog. The reality is that patience is something you build over time, and there are days where you fall short of the version of yourself you want to be, and that’s part of it too.

Lumi forgives me in about 15 minutes and then wants to start playing with her tennis ball, which is honestly more grace than I probably deserve. But the guilt is real, and I think it’s worth naming it.

Something I’ve never actually seen written about honestly (or again, just haven’t stumbled upon since I haven’t been researching this enough at all): sometimes I get frustrated with her, and then I feel terrible about it.

I’m in a rush, or I’m having a bad day, and she’s doing her own thing, at her own pace and rhythm, doing whatever she feels like doing at that exact moment and I get impatient. Frustrated. Forgetting that it’s actually me who needs to allow her to be a dog and let her do things the way she needs to do it.

And then immediately I feel awful. I’ve genuinely spent evenings sitting with that guilt, wondering if I’m doing this right, if she knows I love her, if I’m actually a good dog mum or just someone who took on a living creature without fully thinking it through.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I also don’t see it talked about much – maybe because everyone’s presenting the highlight reel version of their life with their dog. The reality is that patience is something you build over time, and there are days where you fall short of the version of yourself you want to be, and that’s part of it too.

Lumi forgives me in about 15 minutes and then wants to start playing with her tennis ball, which is honestly more grace than I probably deserve. But the guilt is real, and I think it’s worth naming it.

I thought grooming meant brushing occasionally and a trim every few months. It’s quite a bit more than that. Westies have a double coat — a soft undercoat underneath a wiry topcoat — and maintaining it properly involves either hand stripping, which means pulling out the dead topcoat to keep the texture right, or clipping, which is easier but gradually softens the coat over time. I didn’t know this distinction existed for the first couple of years. And honestly, she looked pretty rough and ungroomed for most of the time. First, because we didn’t have a trusted groomer to take her to when we were living in Spain, but secondly because I had no clue the grooming was so important in her case to take care of her.

Westies are higher maintenance than they look, and proper grooming makes a real difference to how they feel, not just how they look. I was once one of those people who didn’t notice how bad she looked and how I wasn’t taking proper care of her fur and now it makes me cringe seeing how bad shape her fur and coat was in those first years of her life.

There’s also the nails, which need trimming more often than not, and the ears, which need regular checking, and the face, which can stain yellow if their diet or water situation isn’t quite right. None of these things are difficult once you know about them, but nobody handed me a list, and I learned most of it by noticing something was off and then going looking for the reason. Talk about the mum guilt creeping in again…

I knew vaguely that Westies can have skin issues and allergies — it’s one of those things that gets mentioned in passing and then forgotten. Lumi was fine for years, so I filed it away as something that maybe affected other people’s Westies and moved on.

Then the ear infections started. At first occasionally, and then more regularly, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to start looking at the root cause rather than just treating the symptoms each time. When I finally started paying attention to her food — really paying attention, reading ingredients properly — I found beef and pork and poultry everywhere. In kibble, in treats, in the chewing sticks I’d been giving her for years without a second thought. These were all things that were quietly making her ears worse, and I had no idea.

This sent me down the rabbit hole of raw feeding and monoprotein diets, which I genuinely hadn’t thought much about before. Switching her to lamb as her main protein made a real difference over time — not dramatic or overnight, but steady and visible. I’m not saying this is the answer for every Westie, because every dog is different, but what I am saying is that ingredients matter more than I realised, and I wish I’d started paying attention earlier rather than waiting until something was already going wrong. Wish I had known from the start to really pay more attention to all the food I was giving her.

So, combining the guilt and not being aware of how important food really is, it’s been a journey. Every time her ears flare up or I notice her skin getting itchy, I immediately feel bad and guilty, feeling like the worst dog mom out there. Judging myself that how come I didn’t do differently before or notice things getting worse and so on.

The health sensitivity is worth taking seriously from the beginning, before anything goes wrong, because it’s much easier to be proactive about food and grooming and ear checks than to be reactive once you’re already dealing with recurring issues.

The personality thing is real, and the sooner you understand that you’re not going to train the independence out of them, the better. Working with their nature rather than against it makes everything more enjoyable for both of you. Less frustrated moments, less nerves lost and overall a happier experience for your westie.

And honestly — the first year is harder than it looks from the outside. You will be more tired, more frustrated, and more in love with this animal than you expected, sometimes all in the same afternoon. Lumi has made me more patient than I ever was before her, not because it came naturally, but because she basically required it of me. Four years in, I’m still learning. And I’m still learning to deal with the guilt that sometimes still creeps in. But I’ll keep learning and doing what’s best of her. I think that’s probably the point.

Nettie is the human behind Little Lumiverse — a Westie mum, content creator, and person who is still learning. Lumi does not contribute to the blog but does supervise from the sofa.