This decision is rarely about which dog is more appealing. It is about fit between a dog's needs and the two resources you cannot stretch: your hours away from home and your energy when you return. A puppy and a young adult dog ask for those resources in completely different shapes, so the honest way to decide is to lay your real working week beside each shape and see which one it can hold.
What a puppy does to a working day
A young puppy cannot wait for your lunch break. He needs toilet trips every hour or two at first, several small meals, naps protected from household noise, and training delivered in dozens of tiny moments across the day. Nights are broken for weeks, sometimes months, and that sleep debt lands on the same person who then works a full day. If you work from home with a genuinely flexible diary, or you can take a block of leave at the start and afford daily help after it, a puppy is workable and many people love the process. If you leave for long unbroken stretches and help would be a favour rather than a service, the arithmetic does not bend: the puppy's development happens in those hours whether you are present for it or not, and habits built alone, like toileting indoors and rehearsing boredom barking, are far harder to undo than to prevent.
What a young adult gives you instead
A dog of one to three years usually arrives housetrained or close to it, able to wait reasonable stretches, and already showing his adult size, energy and temperament. You can meet the actual dog, walk him, watch him settle, and judge him against your life instead of forecasting from a puppy.
Audit your energy as honestly as your hours
People overestimate their evening selves. After your real commute and your real job, what is left: enough for an hour of training games and a walk in the rain, or enough for the sofa? A puppy consumes the leftover energy of everyone in the house for months, including weekends that stop being recovery time. A young adult still deserves exercise and engagement, but he can join your existing rhythm, running with you, settling during your quiet evenings, rather than replacing it. Choosing the dog your energy genuinely covers is the commitment, because he gets the good version of you every day instead of the exhausted one.
Questions that settle it one way or the other
Ask yourself who covers the puppy at ten in the morning on a normal Tuesday, who takes the night trips in the third week, and what happens to your plan when work runs late or you fall ill. If each answer names a person, a payment or a leave booking, the puppy plan is real. If the answers rely on hoping, the young adult is your dog. Ask also what you most want from dog ownership soon: the shaping of a dog from the very start, with all its mess and delight, or companionship that fits your life within a few settling weeks.
Making workday cover simple for either dog
Whichever you choose, your working pattern means someone else will sometimes hold the routine: a walker at midday, a neighbour for an evening feed, a sitter during a work trip. KinsLe Care Pass gives that trusted person temporary, clear access to your dog's feeding, walking and settling details for exactly the time you are away, so the adult's midday walk or the puppy's careful schedule runs the same in your absence as it does when you are home.