YOU'VE read the magazines from cover to cover, absorbing facts and figures and ogling at every glossy photograph.

You’ve digested the books. The wonderful source that is the internet (if only you could believe it all) has been exhausted.

Websites have been trawled through. Search engines have been on fire. The sleepless nights have trundled on. You have tossed and turned but finally, after three long weeks of torment, you have made your decision!

Yes! Now you know which car you are going to buy! So why, oh why, oh why did you just dash out and pick up that puppy without a moment’s consideration? Why do we spend weeks deliberating over a vehicle that will live on the street for three years, yet take only five minutes making up our minds about the dog that will share our house, our lives and our hearts for more than a decade? Daft, isn’t it?

In order to avoid trouble, remember the C words.

Consider your situation: Are you about to have children, leave home and move into a flat, or become very old and infirm? If so, your personal life is about to change dramatically. Select a dog for your future and not your past. Don’t buy granny a Great Dane or your three-month-old daughter a werewolf.

Contemplate your lifestyle: Do you ever want to go on holiday abroad again? Are you a couch potato or a fervent hill walker? Do you jog or cycle? Do you ever get home from work before it is dark? That Chihuahua is not going to manage all those Munros you know. Well not unless you carry him. Similarly, that collie needs 30 miles of exercise a day. (And, if you are like our dear editor and currently can’t manage 500 yards on the treadmill, then please think again).

Calculate your resources: Are you skint? Blowing hundreds (or thousands) of pounds on a pedigree pooch ain’t going to make you happy. It is not an impulse buy that can be returned with the label intact for a full refund. The cost of keeping that Labrador properly in the first year, if you include vaccinations, worming, neutering, food and insurance, might be £1000 or so. Better buy might be a small cross breed that will be cheap to feed and water. And the brachycephalics? They can have recurrent, expensive issues. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

Critique your ability: Have you ever owned or trained a dog before? Is your knowledge based on a couple of editions of that Caesar Milan guy? If so, stop! You know nothing. Visit a local dog training class before you purchase and see for yourself the purgatory these people are going through. After six weeks of intensive instruction, some of them can even walk their dog on a lead. Imagine that fluffy puppy as an adult and whether you really can cope with it.

Cogitate your family: What do they actually want in a pet? Is it a whim or will they really be in it for the long term? This is not a handbag or a bicycle you are buying.

Get it right and you will enjoy a lifetime of fun together. Get it wrong and everyone loses.