I am so upset, I just couldn’t get this topic out of my head.
cornflake, please don’t take this personally, as I obviously don’t know you at all, but what you’re doing really makes me angry. I have had this argument more times than I cared to with my own sister, too. And here’s why.
She and her husband live on an acreage in Alberta, Canada and thought it would be fun for their pets to have the “freedom” to play outside. At one time they had 7 cats and 4 dogs.
Every time one of her cats didn’t come home, she’d call me crying. I wasn’t the sympathetic sister that she apparently expected me to be. I chewed her out but good. What the HELL did she expect, letting her cats outside unattended? Four of them had to get eaten by coyotes before she finally decided to keep the last 3 indoors.
Then one of her puppies didn’t come home one night either. She was absolutely terrified that it had met the same fate as her kitties had. Nope. I don’t think you want me to describe the remains that they found on the railroad tracks after he’d been hit by a train, 4 miles from their house! He’d gotten lost after getting out of the yard and probably thought he could find his way home following the tracks because he knew the tracks went near their property. But he went the wrong way!
And that still wasn’t enough to make her keep her dogs inside. One of her neighbors didn’t like it one bit either. They had a pen out back, but they chewed through the fence. The dogs weren’t doing any damage to this guy’s property, he just didn’t want them there. So he shot one of them and dumped him on the side of the freeway to make it look like he’d been hit by a car. When her husband found the dog, took him home and buried him, the other dogs got sick on the ground where he’d been buried - even they were upset.
My sister couldn’t eat or sleep for days after that. Now her dogs are kept either in the house or in the garage when they’re not home (where the dogs have a cubbyhole that’s carpeted just for them). And when they do go outside, they’re either on leashes or supervised.
Sure, I can almost hear you thinking; you don’t have railroad tracks in your neighborhood. Fine - but you have cars, don’t you? No coyotes? You think those are the only animals that can attack your dog and kill him? Think again. (And he’s especially vulnerable TIED TO A CHAIN HE CAN’T ESCAPE FROM!!! Oh, but you say eventually he’ll be in a fenced in yard. I say so what? Do you think your dog won’t find a way to dig his way out under the fence or chew his way out like my sister’s did? You think a neighbor won’t get mad enough at the barking to shoot him even if he’s in your yard? Think again.
And then ask yourself this; how will you explain it to your son? And how will you console him if his dog is killed because you were too selfish with your space to keep him in the house?
[end of rant] Please forgive my bluntness.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to
improve the world.” - Anne Frank