Most of the more interesting dogs I’ve known vastly preferred the outdoors. Crappy little rat dogs might be different,but all the dogs I’ve ever had would come in for 20-30 minutes of together time,at most, before they started to get board of the lack of smells and sounds inside and went back outside to their house.
**If you’re a dog owner and you don’t allow them to live in the house with you, you’re a dick. **
Okay. Suck Me!
I have a not-so-far-away neighbor who had two pitbulls, and bred them for cash/bartering purposes. The only shelter they had was a ~4’x6’ hurricane-style fence enclosure and I could tell there was nothing for them to eat from (just poured food on cement for them, they did) and waterbowl was easily overturned from so little room to play/move around. Owner kept one of the pups from a litter born just after we moved out here, so there were then three dogs that could not move around much or such.
It only took me one day of winter weather (maybe a week after moving here) before I called Sheriff’s office about legal requirements for keeping any animal (food/shelter/water always available is what I was told by Dispatcher, fwiw) and within minutes a Deputy was seen pointing this and that out to owner with owner looking rather angry about situation.
I have not seen those dogs since (approx a year ago), so whether they are inside animals now or given away (or sold most likely) is unknown. At least I stopped obvious cruelty to a few animals 
I agree for the most part. Most people who don’t bring their dogs inside are jerks. There are exception.
The OP should at a minimum have specified he meant dogs as pets. If sledge dogs for instance are brought inside they’re likely to eat any babies lying around.
dogs hunt and track food. gorge themselves and bury the rest.
trapping them indoors is unnatural.
I always wanted a sledge dog, but I’ve heard they are a can be a little too heavy towards the head.
It seems to me that it’s keeping dog inside which is unnatural. What I always had a problem with, in fact, is people living in apartments and owning dogs who only ever go outside for a short walk on a leash. I know it feels perfectly normal to most people, who have been raised in towns and cities, but I can’t help finding it cruel.
Dogs who never enter the house? Barring extreme weather conditions, I’ve absolutely no problem with that.
Isn’t it funny how every person posting thinks their climate is everyone else’s climate?
If your dog is specifically bred as a sled dog and you are having a Cold Northern Winter, ok then. The OP is talking about the “That’s Right! That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!” choir. The ones who think their German Shepard or Dachshund
is designed like a sled-dog and who posture (after they find it dead, frozen solid on its side in the morning) with crap like, “well, it was too Weak! I Tried to toughen it up, but it was just too sickly & Died. Served it Right”. :dubious:
Those are the folks who need to be chained to their own dog-posts on cold January nights until solidified.
The Iditrarod had 76 Mushers this year. Lets assume 24 dogs per owner and that maybe there are 100x as many people trying as get in (going big as an estimate). That’s 180,000 Huskies/Malamutes.
According to this cite, there are approx 76 million dogs in the US. Doing quick math, 1/5th of 1% of all dogs in the US, work or otherwise, can handle being kept outside in climates with cold winters year round. Thats ONE dog out of every 500.
And if that ONE dog can have thick enough skin to handle it, then maybe its owners should grow some because of the existence of the truly crappy dog owners who force dogs that aren’t meant for cold winters outside to freeze to death “cause I said so” style.
If I had my druthers I’d have an Australian Cattle Dog, like Mad Max’s side kick. However, it needs to run all day everyday and nips at the heels of small creatures it feels compelled to control. So if I wanted to destroy that dogs soul I’d buy one and keep it indoors and punish it for growling at children.
For me, the correct pit is “people who do not appropriately care for the dog they have.” I can fully agree with that, whether it’s someone cramming a great dane into a tiny apartment, or someone making their chihuahua sleep in the snow. Both are equally bad.
You can’t simply pit everyone who keeps their dogs outside. That’s just as pittable as the offense you’re trying to pit, if you ask me.
Don’t you mean “other predators”?
I tried to keep one cat indoors with disastrous results; after three days we installed a cat door. The cat lived a long and happy life improving the gene pool of small birds and rodents. The cat was feral, and nothing was going to change that.
The current cat, however, is quite happily an indoor cat.
I would agree; hunting dogs, particularly bird dogs, are good for children. Herding dogs can be another story, though.
Right. However, for that offense Pit etiquette requires we turn on the OP and eat his brains.
Dog owner. Dog lives with us. In the house when we’re in the house. Out for walks when we go out. Goes to work with my husband. Shares the bed. Shares our lives. I can’t even imagine leaving her outside in the dark and cold by herself. She’s a companion animal, and as such, is a spectacular success at her job. Why on earth would you get a dog just to leave it alone and cold and lonely in the back yard? Just friggin’ heartbreaking to imagine, let alone witness.
My dog died last September and while I had been all “I’ll bury her ashes under her favorite shade tree,” when the time came I totally could not even leave the ashes of my dog outside alone. They are in my bedroom now.
So, I’m with Savannah.
My dog is the world’s biggest baby. Yeah, he’s an inside dog.
Your numbers and breeds are all wrong. In addition to the Iditarod, there is the Yukon Quest, the Tustumena 200, Kuskokwim 300, Knik 200, Northern Lights 300, Snowy Mountain Trapper 250, and the Junior Iditarod; not to mention sprint races like the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous; and that’s just in Alaska. While there is some overlap with racers/races, there are a lot more dogs than you think. And very few people use huskies or malamutes unless they’re into losing a lot.
This happened to us, except we didn’t need a heated dog house in S Cal for the non-housebroken, completely un-mannered eight year old dog we got stuck with. I tried to get it across to her that if she messed in the house, she wasn’t going to get house privileges but at that age, and given her temperament, it just didn’t happen. So she lived out in the back yard for another EIGHT FUCKING YEARS before she finally died. And got to watch the other dogs go in and out of the house and go on trips and all of that.
It really wasn’t her fault she had no manners, and that she was essentially unable to change her ways at that age. But damn I was glad when that dog finally died. And I simply wasn’t going to clean the carpets in the front room and dining room every day so that ungrateful wretch could be indoors.
Danes make awesome apartment dogs. The zommies (that’s what Dane owners call the inexplicable tendency to run at high speeds, veering off in the last instant before 150 pounds of dog crashes into you at 20mph*) require some park time, but other than that, they want a soft place to sleep, and something the can gnaw on, like a human skull. They are truly the Apollo of dogs
- if force is equal to mass times speed, the a 150 lbs dog crashing in to you at 20mph per hour would be, let’s see…times speed…carry the two…really painful.
Yet apartment complexes everywhere welcome dogs and millions of dogs are happy and content living in an apartment. Go figure.