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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
those with pets...
When u are not home where do you leave them? I've been lurking over at the pets board ever since we adopted a second dog a few weeks ago and apparently leaving them in the backyard unsupervised is unacceptable. We've always left Polo in the backyard (for years and years) and we've never had an issue. Even when I was a kid, we would leave our dogs in the backyard when we weren't at home and other than the occasional escape, they have never gotten hurt. I guess they all crate their dogs in the house when they leave (my SIL does this with her Lab puppy and he acts out when they are home). Just wondering what you all do.
Re: those with pets...
We have a lab (Jackson). When we're at work we leave him in his outside run that is attached to our garage. The run is quite large, it has an area that is covered from the elements and he also has access to a small dog room in our garage that is heated for the winter.
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Why are they saying its unacceptable? I'm confused how that's any different than living your little guy/girl in the house when you leave. When I first got my puppy, I crated him in the house. I would come home at lunch and walk him. Then when I came home from work or wherever, I would immediately walk him. Their bladders can't hold much when their puppies. However, now my little Jack is 4.5 and he can go all day holding it. I started leaving him all day in the house outside of the crate at like 1.5-2. If I'm remembering correctly. I would think having your dog in the backyard would be even better because if he had to pee, he could. Just as long as he's not digging, showing signs of aggression, tearing things up, etc...........
Or maybe I'm just a horrible mom and I've got it all wrong......I'll ask Jack when i'm done here!!
See underlined. I really need to spell check things before I send them.
Also, I just checked with Jack. He said I've done just fine......
We have 2 huskies and they're notorious escape artists and the little one isn't quite potty-trained yet so we leave both of them in their own crates when we're out of the house. My brother has a really well-trained, small, non-destructive (ours IS destructive) maltipoo, so he leaves her in the house uncrated when he's gone.
My husband works from home now and my brother's new company allows them to bring their dogs to work, so none of us really leave the dogs at home alone as much/long anymore but that's what we did before our work situations changed.
Unless your dog is escaping or something, I don't see any reason to not leave it outside. We only can't do that b/c they'll escape...
When we're home, Lola stays in the house with us. She sleeps inside on the weekends as a treat, too.
When we're gone, she's outside. We have a pretty big backyard, which is fenced in on all sides, and she roams freely. Before we adopted her, we tried our best to dog-proof the yard, including covering up some gratings and other hazards that she might get into. Lola loves to run and bask in the sun, so I really can't imagine forcing her to stay indoors when she could be safely enjoying her yard. I've never really considered it "dangerous" -- just one of things that could potentially be dangerous, but is probably worth any "risk" for her overall happiness and well-being.
We have two dogs, one of them being an escape artist, so we leave them in the house, free to roam. They are older, 5 and 7, so they are not destructive (minus a couple loaves of bread our lab seems to find from time to time). When they were younger, we kept them in the house in crates.
We've also left them outside at our old house, but there was a covered outside room that they mostly stayed in.
I think the "dangers" of leaving dogs in the backyard would be 1. possible escape (my DH and I have found about 5 dogs that have gotten out and running in the streets). 2. If you don't have a lock, I've heard of people stealing dogs out of backyards...sick I know. and 3. just in case of bad weather, and no protection (of those 5 dogs we've found, 4 of them all got out during rain storms.)
Unless it's sweltering or freezing, Maggie stays in the backyard when we leave the house. She's fine.
Why is this unacceptable? I'm curious now....I may have to check out that board!
Mine stay in the yard but we have a dog door that allows them access to their room of the house.And yes it is twice the size of our master bedroom.
I have large active dogs. I can't imagine not letting them out when I am gone. But as PP mentioned the common concerns are safety for the dog, escaping or theft.
But some ppl did bring up some good points. My mom grew up with a dog (her father's) that was used as a guard dog (hence it was in the yard all the time) and one night, it bit a thief that tried to break into the house. A week later, the dog was poisoned and died. But I do think that these things are rare occurrences but I guess some rather play it safe than take a chance, even if it's a minuscule chance. It would probably also depend on the type of neighborhood they live in.
But like I said earlier, I probably would leave our dogs out if they weren't so good at digging and jumping
We have pugs so leaving them outdoors all day has never been an option. We bought an x-pen and use it to gate off the kitchen and foyer area (both tiled) from the rest of the house so that they have room to roam, but cannot get into too much trouble.
They have four doggie beds between the two of them, all sorts of blankets, toys, water, kibble and most important of all, a temperature controlled environment. We leave piddle pads out in a designated area in case they cannot "hold it" until we're home again, which is quite rare, but known to happen. They also come in handy when it's raining because they won't potty outside in the rain.
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This. I understand the concerns that people have about poisoning and whatever, but really, those are rare events.
I've also read that leaving dogs out in the weather is cruel. I have to say, I don't get this. We don't put them out on days when it's really bad weather, and I know that dogs don't mind being crated...but if I were a dog, I'd rather be outside on a hot summer day, frolicking and playing with my doggie buddy, with plenty of cool shady places to lie (including a large protected area under the deck and a kennel) and a big bowl of water to drink, than cooped up in a box all day (we don't have a room where they could stay, so they'd have to be crated) and only getting exercised for a couple hours before nighttime.
I guess this is because we have two VERY high energy dogs (who have never tried to escape, which I know is important lol!) - they would be miserable if we crated them all day. They LOVE being outside running around, and there's no way we could make up for that amount of exercise during the evening when we're home. Obviously, this isn't true for every breed - but it is for ours.
And I know this might get me flamed, but at the end of the day, they're dogs. We love them like they're our children and treat them like little princes, but they're dogs - they're animals that for thousands of years have run around and hunted and played all day, every day, in all kinds of weather. I completely realize this isn't true for some dogs, especially the small companion breeds, but ours were bred to be working dogs - an inactive life would be far more abusive to them than leaving them in the backyard.
So I guess this all was a very long winded way of saying...we leave them outside all day, every day, when we're at work, and I don't feel the tiniest bit guilty about it.
Sorry if I came off a bit grouchy...it's not directed at anyone here - someone recently accused me of "abusing" our dogs by keeping them outside during the day, and I guess it's still a sore topic!
i agree with everyone else.
if it's freezing cold and they have a thin coat... or if it's 100 degress outside and it's a husky, then i can see how it could be bad.
otherwise i think the main reason it could be bad is due to the risk of escape or someone (like the pool or yard person) coming in to do maintenance and accidentally letting them run out..... they could get hit by a car before being caught.
I don't see why letting them run around and get some exercise is bad? some dogs do prefer being inside though or kept in a crate...but the bottom line is that you know your dog best
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
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We keep our beagle in the house when we leave the house. I work from home so I'm usually home to let him out to pee (or the babysitter will let him out if I'm not home). If no one will be home for an extended period of time (over 8 hours) then I'll take him to doggy daycare.
Our neighbors have two dogs that they always leave outside (and one dog inside) and it drives me nuts. Those dogs bark at everything - people, other animals, trucks and they howl whenever they hear a siren (like an ambulance).
I guess besides the safety of the dog, because of my experience with the neighbors, I would try to be considerate to my neighbors if you have a barker. I realize that dogs bark but when they bark at everything, it's intruding on other's quality of life. The tricky part is that sometimes people don't realize that their dogs bark since they are not home to hear it
This is the exact reason we got a bark collar for one of our dogs. We realized that if he was occasionally barking at nothing when we were home, he was probably doing it a lot more while we were away (he's a fairly vocal dog - he "talks" to us all the time, so he's just naturally very verbal). That collar is like magic, I'm tellin' you! I wish more people would take responsibility for what their dog does when they're away - we used to live next door to people who had three dogs that do exactly what you describe and it made me craaaaaazy!
I agree that it depends on the type of dog. Our little pugs are the biggest wusses ever. The weather has just started changing where we live and when I kick my little darlings outside to potty, they LITERALLY start shivering. Consequently, we keep them in their crates inside (to keep them out of trouble, because neither of them can be trusted not to get into trouble while we're gone), and we have a dog walker come every day at lunch time to give them some exercise.
Believe it or not, I was actually thinking of your and Lori's pugs when I wrote that! That's why I put the "small companion breeds" bit in there, because like you said, it does depend on the type of dog. For ours, they both have good coats and are tough breeds - but for smaller dogs, there's definitely room to reconsider.