Why? At least they were at home, in their comfy house. They probably felt the same way when their owners left to go out for a few hours. They’ll be all right.
My neighbor has mother my mother come and do that when he goes away for his dog. She’s okay. (Besides, she loves my mom.)
Oh god, what monsters to have pet sitters. I leave my dog in the house for eight hours a day and don’t even come home to walk him! Then when I get home, after a couple hours I go into my room and close the door on his little nose and leave him alone for eight more. Call Animal Control, somebody needs to take me to the pound.
I guess these dogs were used to having people around. I mean, only having about ten or twenty minutes of human contact a day just seems way too little for a dog. Obviously, they’re not going to die, but why get a dog if you don’t care about how it’s going to feel?
My husband’s son (late 20’s) called yesterday a.m. and asked if we’d feed and water his two dogs while he’s gone – he’s driving to Florida, leaving in a few minutes.
The kid lives in another town, we don’t know his dogs (one is an Akita, the other is a big something we’ve never even met, it’s his girlfriend’s dog), and the dogs are kept on a chain in an unfenced yard.
There are no words. We’d bring the dogs here but we’d just be exchanging one tree and chain for another, in an unfamiliar place. The dogs aren’t housebroken and we don’t know how they’d be around cats so we’re not going to risk bringing them inside. We can’t afford to kennel them and we don’t even know if the dogs have had their shots.
So Ron’s driving over there twice a day to check on the dogs. We’re having a cool spell of weather and no rain, or I don’t know what we’d do. I’m tempted to call the authorities but I’m afraid the dogs would just be picked up and put down. I told Ron to put the dogs in the house, but there’s a small dog in the house. Presumably so the big dogs don’t eat him.
Why do people have dogs if they’re only going to use them as lawn ornaments? The kid needs a kick in the ass, and he’ll get one when he gets back.
Well, that’s good to know.
My husband is going to drive to Colorado in a few weeks to give his daughter’s dog to her ex-boyfriend. (Husband was going to Colorado anyway, but he would have flown). The boy is supposed to meet my husband in a city three hundred miles from his home, and he doesn’t have a car, but he’ll “find a way.” :dubious:
The irresponsible child who brought us the dog in the first place will be flying to Colorado alone next week to spend her birthday with ex-boyfriend. Not a care in the world, and no kick in the ass waiting for her either.
Dung Beetle, do you think she’s learned her lesson? Maybe not, since she’s not the one being inconvenienced. Fingers crossed that the ex makes a good home for the dog, unappealing as it is.
I surely don’t. 
Hey, who’s taking care of the little dog in the house?
Ron’s doing his food and water too, and playing with him. He’d probably play with the big dogs too, but the Akita is a bit standoffish.
Good call on not bringing the dogs to your house, AuntiePam. Seems like the situation you’re in IS a pain in the ass, but having them at your home sounds worse in your situation.
Things aren’t going too well here. Dolly decided Friday when they dropped the puppy off (3 hours early) that she in fact does NOT like the puppy, so she’s been quite snarly. As expected, though, things have “worked themselves out” and the puppy has been snapped at enough to know to stay away. For the most part.
She did, however, grab my retainer from my nightstand and give it a good chewing. Broke off some plastic, puked it up and left a stain on the carpet. I didn’t catch it in time to put a stop to it, and I’m the one who carelessly left the tasty treat where she could get it…so no blame here. I was able to disinfect the thing and bend it back enough to fit in my mouth.
Three more days to go. Oy!
Thank heavens for you and Ron, then.
Truthfully, I believe we’ll get stuck with stepdaughter’s dog in the long run, so I’m trying to adjust myself to the idea. Maybe I’ll get a cute little pug in my next life.
They’re a tool of last resort. Something tells me these people haven’t tried the first, second, and third resorts (which are, to wit: you, the human, bothering to learn how to train with positive reinforcement).
Pugs are so cute.
Maybe stepdaughter’s dog’s appearance can be improved. A good haircut sometimes works for me.
ZipperJJ, oy indeed! Puppy-proofing a house is harder than baby-proofing.
I’m with the couple of folk who don’t see the garage itself as all that horrible of a deal.
Of course the temps are relevant. I’m not sure 80s alone is necessarily too hot, provided there are windows for ventilation, and plenty of water. But they are probably at least near the upper border.
Toss down a few towels/rugs and the dog’s favorite toys, and I don’t see why it would be all that worse than leaving it in the house, in one room of the house, or in a crate.
Another relevant factor is how frequently the neighbor is going to check in on the dog for how long. If the neighbor stops by - say - 4 times a day, and spends 15 minutes with the dog each time, I think many dogs have it much worse.
I’m not sure that impresses me as terribly worse than folks who work full-time jobs leaving their dogs alone in their cages for 8-10 hours per day. Or putting a dog in a kennel, unfamiliar surroundings,where it has unfamiliar dogs barking all around.
And I’m not sure 6 months is necessarily too young. If not then, when? How old ought a puppy be before being left alone for how long?
Having said all this, the neighbor certainly sounds like an idiot who has no business keeping a dog. Not sure it quite rises to the level of abuse, but it is probably pretty close.
I think a lot of people might argue that that is cruel. Dogs are social animals. Many people refuse to take their animals with them to England because the quarantine period is just that hard on them.
I’m laughing at the thought of a doggie makeover!
This picture shows him in the background (and that’s me with the bare feet). I suppose he’s not really the least appealing dog on earth, if you don’t take slobbering into account…
Well, that’s hardly fair - the dog in the foreground is so gorgeous.
Thank you, Zsofia! A year ago, I thought of that gorgeous dog as a big pain in the ass…so maybe a year from now, I’ll feel better about the new dog too.
Dung Beetle, dogs are a pain in the ass. So are cats, children, spouses, and all other pets. It’s just that when they’re ours we don’t mind nearly so much.
So this morning the puppy tried to break out by digging a hole under the fence (oddly enough, not towards her own house!) This was like at 6 AM, and it was drizzling, and she is a white dog. I finally collected her, wiped her off a bit and put her in her cage. Not as a punishment - the routine here is to wake up, eat/potty, then go back to bed for a coupla hours. I wasn’t awake enough to deal with her dirtiness.
Then when I finally did get up I made the mistake of doing my bathroom stuff instead of letting the dogs back out for THEIR bathroom stuff, and the puppy pooped in the hallway. I was in a quandry because I didn’t want to take the time to deal with her digging before I got to potty myself.
So I took her outside, and put some dog poo in the hole she’d dug. I noticed she’d reached over and grabbed what looks like a dead plant from the neighbor’s garden. Let’s hope it was dead, and not something important. Let’s also hope he doesn’t notice the pile of dog poo and dirt next to his fence.
Now it seems she has decided to dig deeper into the holes in Dolly’s big bed. There were already holes, from Dolly scratching and trying to “nest” in the bed. The puppy flat out ripped the insides out.
I just ordered a new bed online. Lucky for everyone it was $25 off and free shipping. It’ll be Dolly’s treat for not killing the puppy this week.
My mom said “make sure you tell your neighbor when she gets back!” I said … what am I supposed to tell her? “I said I’d watch your puppy, only I didn’t do much ‘watching’ and she dug and ripped stuff up like puppies do”? I know my neighbor’s answer would be “You should have put her in the garage!”
Untrained puppies. Blech!
As much as I can sympathize with having to deal with puppy antics, I’m horribly jealous. I wish I had a puppy to watch for a week!
As it turns out, we found out last weekend that we also have idiot neighbors when it comes to dogs. They have a year old pug, and, like your neighbors, have not realized that a pup doesn’t just automatically follow the owner around AND they have no fenced yard. We knew the dog got out a lot, because we’ve had them come over and ask if we’d seen it (once in the middle of February, at night, when it was below zero out).
This weekend, a friend of ours showed up at our door, pug in tow. He was pale - apparently the dog had been running in the middle of the very-busy road we live on, and he said 8 or 10 cars had stopped to avoid hitting it. He knew we had pugs, and he thought it might be ours so stopped and caught it and brought it to us.
We knew right away it was our neighbors, so took it from him. Sure enough, we go out in the backyard and hear the neighbor calling for her dog. We yelled, and she came over and got it, and re-iterated the whole “we just don’t know why he takes off!” line. She asked if ours stayed near us - we pointed at the large fenced area off our deck.
The whole thing just makes me angry. I can see being clueless and not realizing a dog will run off once, but this happens over and over and over. That poor pug is going to die on the road in front of our house, I know it. I just can’t even think about it anymore.