# To Southerners and Easterners: what's with the fencelessness? What about your dogs? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 17, 2004, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216 "2004-11-17T05:57:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![smartini](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@smartini](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smartini)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/41 "2004-11-21T07:28:18Z")
I live in the South and inside the city. I have a small lawn in front and back. The back is fenced but the front is not. I don’t think I have ever lived in a house with a fenced front yard. We’ve always had fenced backyards because we’ve always had pets. ---
**Author:** ![Dragonblink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Dragonblink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragonblink)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/42 "2004-11-21T23:32:20Z")
I should probably mention that in some suburbs and neighborhoods of Los Angeles – like Glendale, for instance (the conservative, nondescript city sandwiched between Burbank and Pasadena) – front yard fences over 18" tall are forbidden. As are tall hedges, if I’m not mistaken. I’m an antisocial, hermitty sort, so I often wish my front yard had a fence. But then, my front yard is 95% concrete (wish I knew which previous owner thought _that_ was a good idea :rolleyes: ). ---
**Author:** ![jastu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@jastu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jastu)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/43 "2004-11-22T01:59:24Z")
In Adelaide South Australia, all back yards are fenced and I would guess around 70% of front yards. Many front fences are only a couple of feet high to mark the property boundary and in most cases look hideous. Not only does each house have a different fence which spoils the look of the neighbourhood, but many don’t even match their house. What were people thinking? It’s only in the newer suburbs where they have dispensed with the front fence or alternatively on smaller blocks, have one which is 6’ completely enclosing the property. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/44 "2004-11-29T05:19:36Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > First…what is a “rowhouse” exactly? Houses sharing two walls with others (corner houses sharing one), typically with a concrete alleyway in the back seperating them from another row of same which face front on the adjacent parallel street. [Photo](http://www.providenceschools.org/veazie/images/neighborhood_rowhouses_full.jpg) It’s a bit hard to find a photo of the type I have in mind, probably because the streets are so narrow that photographing a block from across the street would require one heck of a wide-angle lens. ---
**Author:** ![teleute12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@teleute12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teleute12)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/45 "2004-11-29T08:42:41Z")
Northern Californian here, and I’ve never seen a neighborhood without backyard fences. (Probably because I don’t remember living anywhere but our current place.) I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Even the house where my mom grew up in Washington, which had (what seemed to 11-year-old me, anyway) a huge yard, had something to show which yard was which. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/46 "2004-11-29T13:23:01Z")
Here’s an aerial [photo](http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?t=1&s=10&x=2078&y=23844&z=16&w=1) with one meter resolution for those who can’t imagine what a neighborhood without backyard fences looks like. I grew up here. As I said, there are landscaping features that indicate the borders of properties. But they suggest more than demand — there’s still a free flow design to the yards. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/47 "2004-11-29T13:41:50Z")
Suburban Chicago. Not too many fences in the neighborhood when I was growing up, but that has changed. We had hedges on either side of the back. One guy in the neighborhood put a chainlink fence around his house, all the way to the sidewalk! Everyone thought he was a numbskull. ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/48 "2004-11-29T17:24:58Z")
I grew up in a suburb in NJ in a neighborhood with maybe 1/4-1/2 acre lots. Part of everybody’s back yard was woods, so my ‘block’ was like a ring of houses and open front yards with woods in the middle. The only fences were the required ones around swimming pools. Otherwise children, dogs, cats, and whatever else pretty much roamed free. Every once in a while a pet would get hit by a car so it was by no means a perfect system but I though it was pretty good. Everybody respected everybody else’s property and at the same time certain people would allow others to ‘cut through’ one another’s property to get to a school bus stop or the lake. The woods offered sufficient privacy. I have a place upstate and the zone has only 5 acre lots, so no one has fences except around gardens, paddocks, or to keep livestock in. Thanks for the link, Walloon. [Here’s the picture](http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?t=1&s=10&x=2694&y=22607&z=18&w=1) of my old neighborhood. ---
**Author:** ![Ashkicker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ashkicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashkicker)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/49 "2004-11-30T00:51:36Z")
We don’t have a fence around our yard. I don’t feel like we need a fence up to keep the neighbors animals out of our yard. I feel they should keep their animals up and out of our yard as we give them the same respect of keeping our animals in our own yard. You ask “What about your dogs”? Hell, I wish that was all we had to worry about. Instead we have to put up [with this shit](http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4d722b3127cce9cf7fde612c600000016108AbMWjZy3bNP). Can’t find the picture of the horses running around but we got that too tearing up our yard. The pigs started an all out family feud, as it is family that owns them. We live in the country and just outside of Knoxville to boot. ---
**Author:** ![Magickly\_Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magickly\_Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magickly_Delicious)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2004, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216/50 "2004-11-30T01:09:58Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > What is up with that? I’m from central PA. I don’t like fences - they aren’t neighborly and they’re ugly. > [@](#): > > What about your dogs? Don’t have any dogs. The neighbors don’t either. People who do have dogs usually tie them up or they have some sort of pen set up. > [@](#): > > What about your privacy? Dude, it’s central PA! Have you seen how rural some areas are? > [@](#): > > What about your landscaping choices? _snort_ Now you really sound like you’re from California. We don’t need no fool poncy “landscaping.” :p. 'Sides, it snows and freezes here every year so we spend just as much if not more time looking at snow than we do seeing green plants. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-southerners-and-easterners-whats-with-the-fencelessness-what-about-your-dogs/275216.md?page=2)