Holy. Crap. That’s animal cruelty.
Your friend should not have a dog if they would rather abuse the poor thing than pay for boarding.
No reflection on you - you’re doing what you can - but your friend should not be allowed near animals ever again. Jeez.
Walking twice a day? My GSD is recovering from knee surgery and has to be crated all day while I’m at work and at night. He still gets walked at least 5 times. Twice in the mornings before work. Once as soon as I get home, then I feed the horses and walk him again. During the evening he’s loose in the house with me and the other dogs, but he gets walked at least twice more before bed.
A puppy shouldn’t spend his whole life crated, with two chances a day to get out. That’s no life for anything. Even rodents, who spend the majority of their time confined, have a much bigger area in relation to their size. And a breed like a JRT is very high-energy. She’s going to have a destructive, neurotic dog on her hands.
StG
Kaia came to us because of a situation just like this. I know that it’s not rachelellogram’s dog, nor did she cause the situation but reading this thread is breaking my heart (and getting Kaia treats every time I read it at home).
We’ve had her for 4 years now and we’re still noticing behaviour changes. After our last vacation I think she’s finally accepting that we will always come home. She didn’t regress when we left for work the following week like she did last year.
Please when your friend gets home - encourage her to find someone who can spend the kind of time with the dog that it needs.
Yeah it made me really sad to leave last night and have to crate her back up again. But I did take her for a walk, and bathtime was good! She was quiet and let me wash her and then I hugged her dry with a towel. 
I found a little squishy plastic crab and we played fetch with it (she was running around a lot inside, like a little air dryer), and then a bit more this morning. She doesn’t quite understand how to play fetch, I don’t think (she never drops the toy into my hand but she does get it in my general area so I can throw it again), but it was still good exercise.
She is still pointing at stuff (I think, she raises one front leg and stares at things outside) and she also does the digging/rooting thing in the mulch. Especially after she pees, hehe.
I definitely can’t afford to pay someone to walk her dog. I can afford the gas to get to my friend’s place and that is it. I actually was thinking it’d probably be more humane to accidentally lose her than to keep her inside as such, but that’s not really my call to make. I value my friendship more than a dog’s happiness; take that as you will.
I should have warned you about the dog running around after a bath - around our house, we call that ‘zooming’. Sorry 'bout that, chief!
It was cute! And I believe she’s allowed to do that anyway (if not, she is when I’m the mommy!). The rug hides stains fairly well, but clean water still shouldn’t hurt anything.
Sure they do: don’t get a dog.
This. I don’t usually get worked up about random stuff I read on the Dope, but right now I am totally ready to smack the OP’s friend around a little (but not the OP, who I agree is doing the best she can under ridiculous circumstances – but rachelellogram, if you’re anywhere near Northern Virgina message me and I’ll take the puppy in for a week!).
Jesus effing christ. :mad:
I wouldn’t worry about overfeeding it as much (it’s only a week). However, if it’s a puppy mill puppy, it would explain why it pooped in the crate.
By the way, why not put the crate in the car with the dog and take it to the park that way? Although, if there are other dogs/people around, make sure to keep her on a leash and under control as she may not be socialized. On second thought, that might be a bad idea as you might not know if the dog’s immunization is up to snuff.
Well my friend got her as a very young puppy. I don’t think she had time to be traumatized by the puppy mill goings-on. Pooing in her crate is not a regular occurrence; in fact, she hasn’t done it since. (I think I let her drink too much water) She’s 11 months old now so I’m pretty sure she’s outgrown any of that behavior. I hope!
But my friend definitely shouldn’t have financially supported the enterprise.
There’s no water in the crate? For 16 hours a day?
Please leave the puppy water in it’s crate, please?
Dear god this thread is awful.
I hope you can at least understand why so many people are so very appalled at the situation your friend has created. Every time you post a new clarification or additional details, it gets worse and worse.
Regarding the portion I quoted, while I understand your perspective in a general sense, I hope this whole scenario has given you some insight into your friend’s true character. Personally, I could not possibly stand to be friends to someone who acts in such a disgusting manner - I don’t think I could even act in a friendly manner toward them, let alone cherish a relationship with them.
OK. Honestly, the above is the nice, polite phrasing. Below is the succinct version:
Your “friend” is a piece of shit.
Rachel, to be clear, I can tell you’re doing your best under the circumstances. My vitriol is not directed at you, just my 
that you think this person is worth being friends with.
She treats people much better than she treats her dog. And I don’t believe she’s actively evil; I do think she’s self-absorbed and intellectually incurious (hence the lack of breed research and picking a pet based on cuteness instead of potential compatibility). She also has a very distracting medical condition (meniere’s disease) and has been on short term disability from work for a while, so eh. Mitigating factors and all that. I don’t plan to stop calling her my friend because of this. Plus she’s the only friend I have and beggars can’t be choosers. woof 
Plus she’s moving across the country (back in with her stepfather and sister) in less than 3 months’ time, anyway. After that point we will cease to be friends by dint of the distance alone. Hopefully with the family members she has out there, as well as his yard, the dog will be out more and get more exercise. I just don’t want to leave a bad taste in our mouths about each other for the rest of our lives because of this.
TBH though, and this may be TMI for dog-lovers, I just have a very hard time identifying with dogs. They just strike me as dumb. They do dumb things, they don’t poop in litterboxes or toilets, they smell stinky, they don’t bathe themselves, they can’t be trusted to be left alone indoors all day long. If it was a cat in this situation I might be more likely to steal it and risk the friendship (plus, cats are easier to hide!). Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it’s the truth.
You’re not a bad person for not being a dog person, but a lot of what you listed is because of OWNER failings, not dog failings. Dogs can be trained to chew on their toys and not your furniture (and reasonably confined until they have the knack) in the same way that cats can be trained not to claw furniture. There’s no reason a dog couldn’t be trained to use a litter box (assuming a small enough dog - I don’t think they make St. Bernard sized litter pans) - some people choose to train their dogs to use absorbent “pee pads” so that the dog has a designated place to go in the house between walks. A healthy dog that lives in an apartment (and therefore has a lack of dead things to roll in) shouldn’t be out-and-out stinky, but there is a certain amount of normal dog smell just like there’s a normal cat smell, etc.
Mostly, I feel sorry for the dog. I can’t imagine being told I could only pee and drink twice a day, on somebody else’s schedule. As noted above, JRT’s are very high energy dogs, and being locked up all the time with just a couple short walks is like expecting a toddler to sit still all day and sleep all night. I do expect more from my friends regarding concern for the well-being of animals in their care, but it’s your friend, not mine.
Most dogs WILL look at you like they are still starving even if you feed them an entire chicken twice a day. They lack the subtle wiles of cats but are still quite convincing, out of proportion to their actual dietary needs.
Just want to chime in with everybody else that I think rachelellogram is going a fine job in a bad situation. Buying a dog only to leave it in a crate all day and all night is even worse than chaining a dog outside all the time. Why do it? Get a stuffed animal or a gold fish if you (rachelellogram’s friend) don’t want to be bothered. A Jack Russell terrier is about as bad of a choice as possible for this owner.
Again, you are doing a good thing rachelellogram but the situation sucks.
Take the dog home. When your friend returns, put her in the crate and lock the door. Come back once a day to feed her and walk her. Make sure to remove any necklaces when she is in the crate.
Difficult to tell from the context of these two posts, but do you know if she’s still been crating the dog all day while she’s home on disability? And, while I don’t want to imply that people with disabilities shouldn’t travel, it seems weird to read that someone is too ill to work but they’re off traveling somewhere for a week.
Update on the horse gig:
The horse is still clinging to life.
Even setting aside the abuse, what is so appealing about this woman that you’d want to be friends with her?
Sigh.
Time to fight some ignorance.
Rachellogram, I appreciate the time you are taking to care for your friend’s pup but there are a few things to clear up here. Quite obviously you know very little about dogs in general though your heart is in the right place and I thank you for that.
Dogs are actually quite simple to care for. Most of them can be easily trained when young to use the bathroom wherever you want them to. Most can be litter trained, though the size of most dogs makes this somewhat impractical. Larger dogs are quite capable of being toilet trained, though it takes time to do so and most people simply walk the dog which is better for it anyway. Certain hounds do have a strong odour, the rest should not have a smell unless they haven’t been bathed in a long time. Most indoor dogs can be bathed once a month or less to prevent a little muskiness. Ours get baby powdered occasionally to extend the time between baths. Dogs groom themselves and each other if you have more than one. Like people they range from sloppy to fastidious, many spending nearly an hour each day grooming their fur through teeth combing, and bathing offending parts of themselves with their tongues. A well adjusted dog can be left unsupervised and uncrated without any issues. Kept in pairs or greater numbers they often don’t need as much attention from the humans ans they amuse each other. Dogs do require more work than cats, but they are hardly an onerous chore.
Good catch there, Sailboat.
And one more chiming in to the chorus that most of the things the OP mentioned as being negatives about dogs are problems caused by the owner, not by the dog. Give the dog a pat on the head from me, will ya? He’s in for a lifetime of misery, and that’s not even a little bit of an exaggeration. Most countries treat rapists in prison better than that dog will ever experience.
Aaaand that’s enough of that from me for now - good luck, Rachel. You seem to be doing your best, and that’s all anyone can really ask.