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Question for dog owners :)
Since we're talking pets lately!
This is all hypothetical at this point, but I'm curious-- how do you take care of your dog(s) if you and your HH are both working?
I always had dogs when I was growing up, but a) we were homeschoolers, so Mom and my brother and I were home all day, and b) when we did have to go somewhere, we had a fairly large fenced-in area with a doghouse and plenty of shade trees. So I know a good bit about dogs but nothing at all about having a dog if you can't just put it in its pen when you're leaving for a few hours, or, say, an entire workday (my folks work now, but their dog just hangs out in the pen all day).
Do you have a fenced-in backyard? Does somebody run home at lunch to play with the dog and let it out? Do you do doggie daycare?
We probably won't get a dog for years, but I would sooo love to have one. Other people in our townhouse complex have dogs, but I don't know if someone is home all day or what. Sigh.
Re: Question for dog owners :)
When I first got Brody as a puppy, I was still in school, so I didn't have to leave him home alone for long. We tried to do the whole crate training thing, but that didn't work out too well. He HOWLED the entire time he was locked in and my apartment neighbors complained so I finally had to start leaving him out of his crate. He did pretty well though once out of the crate.
Now, Adam and I leave for work at about 7 AM and then Adam usually gets home around 4ish.... Brody just stays inside the whole time. We have a 1/2 acre privacy fenced in backyard, but Brody still stays inside while we're gone.
Well we haven't found our dog yet but when we do it will be an inside/outside dog. We have a large back yard with a creek but its not fenced in. We plan on putting up a runner chain in the trees so it will have plenty of sun and shade when its hot. During the day while we're both at work it will stay outside but when we get home we'll let it loose and in the house.
We live in an apartment and have a bichon frise who is crate trained. We both work during the day so he stays in his crate while we're gone. When we first got him, I started going home at lunch to let him out and training him to be able to stay by himself longer. Now he does great all day. He has some separation anxiety as he will freak out if we leave him in the apartment without putting him in his crate. He will bark and run like crazy, but if he's in his crate he is happy and content... weird, but he's happy, lol(it's his little area). We make sure to spend a lot of time and play with him in the evenings.
I don't know everything there is to know about crate training, but this is a good option if you want to confine them to a small enough area for a period of time. It takes some getting used to and there are guidelines on how big their crate should be, how long you can be gone, etc. But, I know that it works particularly well for bichons.
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We have 2 dogs, Rocco 15 mo Boxer and Sosha 7 mo black lab mix. We use to kennel them during the day. DH goes home for lunch everyday and would let them out and play with them. Starting at about 10 mo we started letting Rocco out for a few hours after lunch. Now, we let Rocco out all day, and Sosha is still in her kennel. Once she gets closer to a year, she will be let out all as well.
Wow! So some dogs can be left inside, by themselves, for 9 hours at a stretch? I did not know this. Hmmm...
AND.. Brody just might be a weird exception.
Yeah. Brody sounds exceptionally good at handling it! Sigh.
Realistically, we're just not ready for a dog yet. We both work roughly 9-5 three days a week (on Mondays and Tuesdays our schedules are staggered, so that wouldn't be a problem), and we each have a 25-minute commute, so it wouldn't be feasible for one of us to run home at lunch time. I glanced at doggie daycare prices in the area, and... not happening.
Matt doesn't want a dog, anyway. He knows that it is inevitable eventually, but we sort of agreed that kids will come first and then we'll get a dog for them. So... 10 years from now, I'll get my doggie.
I'm going to be periodically reassessing the situation until then, though, trying to figure out a way to do it sooner!
I am part time and HH is full time. When I was fulltime, I came home on my lunch break to feed Luca her lunch feeding and let her out. She's on 3 feedings a day, because I need to divide her meals up into smaller portions to prevent bloat.
Stella hasn't gone in the house since she was about 9 or 10 weeks old. There have been one or two times in the past three years when I haven't been home (once when I was away at school, another time this year when I was living in a different province entirely) and HH has had a work emergency and hasn't been able to come home until HOURS later than he should have. So there have been two times that I can think of that Stella was in her kennel for upwards of a good 10 or 11 hours, and she didn't have an accident, God bless her.
I really think that if you crate train your dog (and it is HARD for the first little bit) that it is the best thing for your dog. We crate trained her from the day we got her, and although we don't put her in her crate during the day now (she just has free rein in one large room) her crate is always always always available to her, and she just goes and lies in there a lot. Actually, a few nights ago she got in it and decided to sleep in there overnight, HH and I couldn't stop laughing because she just WOULDN'T come out, and she has TWO big comfy beds of her own that she normally sleeps on, but for some reason that night she felt like she wanted to be in her crate. Crate trained dogs really do feel like it is their own little safe spot, and they really enjoy being in there. One rule of crate training is that you can never go into their crate and get them, especially if it is for a reason that they won't like. For example, as soon as Stella sees us get out her nail clippers she will immediately head for her crate, and then we just have to wait for her to come out before we can clip them. We have to remember to shut the door BEFORE we get the clippers out, otherwise we can't get her to come out of her crate at all. It would be a big no no to go in to her crate and just grab her. So that's part of the reason why they love them so much.
I 100% agree w/ Jehawley. We have crate trained both dogs. Rocco never really learned to love it, but he didn't cry or whine while in there. He just never went in there on his own time. He would much prefer to lay at your feet or on the couch. Sosha on the other hand goes into her kennel all of the time on her own. She loves it. She is also rescue, so she was use to it.
It is difficult in the beginning, but I think it is the best thing. I can't wait til Sosh is big enough to be let out (she is still in the chewing phase) so I can get rid of our giant kennel whose home is my dining room.
So I keep reading all of your rec's for crate-training, and the thought that keeps going through my mind is "Matt's not ready for that yet."
How sad is it that I can't get a dog because I couldn't train my husband to be consistent and/or not interfere with the dog's training? He never had pets, but he doesn't listen to me when it comes to animals, and he really, really should. He's a counselor, and I think that he honestly believes that he should be able to talk the cat out of engaging in undesirable behavior. He keeps telling Gulliver not to do things, and then he's surprised when the cat goes ahead and does them, anyway!
haha... I'm trying to imagine your H trying to reason with the cat!!!
It's the weirdest thing. I have such a hard time understanding how people do not get the most basic things about animals. The one time that MIL was over, she kept saying my name in a squeaky, excited voice, trying to get the cat to go running to me. I said until I was blue in the face that cats don't really do that. She kept trying.
Matt also tries to teach the cat to recognize and/or care about words. Not words like "dinner." I mean words like "touchdown" or "X-Men." You would think that he would give up after two years of futile effort.
I'm not trying to brag, but my cat knows several commands.
Don't get me wrong, he's a total freak - hyperactive and whatnot, but he knows sit, jump up (jumps to where you point), off, and stand (stands on his hind legs). I was bored one day, and was reading an article on training cats. Lo and behold, it can be done!
Ugh....my computer just erased my entire entry. Grr.
So, the theory is, is that a dog can go 2 hours for every month they are old. We got Chloe when she was 6 weeks old. I took her out every hour or two at the most. I was off work for 10 days (I work 3 days a week) when we first got Chloe, so after I went back to work, Adam would come home and take her out at lunch (30 min drive each way). She would make it most of the time, except when we first got her, we bought a bag of food that was supposed to be great, but gave her diarrhea, and she had a few accidents in the crate.
We crated her for the first 8 months, then started leaving her baby gated into the master bedroom. Aside from chewing up Adam's rainbows and chewing the foot board on the bed, she did pretty well. when we moved to our house, she was a year old, and started leaving her out with the whole house to her. I think she got nervous like that (because dogs like their crates which are like their dens) and ended up chewing the baseboards near the door.
She's gone for as long as 14 hours before, when I had to work and Adam had to work late. She did great. We felt horrible, but there was nothing we could do. Chloe stays out in the house all day, and the only time she's been in a crate recently is on our honeymoon, she stayed at my mom's house, and I told her to put her in her crate while they were gone because I didn't want her to do the same thing to my mom's brand new house. She did wonderful. We don't even have a crate set up anymore.
It's really the first few months that are super hard. We got super lucky with crate training...the first night we had her, she whined in her crate for maybe 20 minutes and then was quiet...execpt when she woke up every 2 hours to pee. We did a training class with her, and she's incredibly smart. We were upstairs in the man cave, and I told her to go get her duckie, and she ran out of the room, downstairs, was gone a minute, and then came back up the stairs, proudly squeeking her duckie!!!
No, I don't love my dog at all.
You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through.
If you were in my shoes, you'd fall the first step."
Ok Becky, I think we all need to know: what are Adam's rainbows?
And Stella is super smart with language too. She can distinguish between "Go get your ____" ball, monkey, bone, leash. And for people who say that dogs don't have a good memory...if I say "Stella, do you want a cookie?" while I'm in the middle of something, and then get distracted and don't get her a cookie in a timely manner, she will stay pissed at me for hours until I get her a friggin cookie.
She also knows when we're talking about her, even if we don't say her name. There was one time when she was all excited about me coming home from work that she actually fell the entire way down the stairs and rolled into the door at the bottom (she was wagging her tail so vigorously that she lost her balance and rolled right off the top step). When HH came home I was laughing so hard telling him the story, that she gave me the dirtiest look and went and grabbed one of my shoes and started angrily shaking it in her mouth. I hadn't even said her name, but she knew I was making fun of her!
I also love my dog like crazy.
LOL. Rainbow sandals, have you not heard of them? They're leather and once you wear them in, you will never want to wear anything else on your feet. All the rage with the college kids. LOL
www.rainbowsandals.com
If you don't own a pair, I recommend you buy one! Stat!
You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through.
If you were in my shoes, you'd fall the first step."
See, this is exactly why Matt would LOVE a dog and just doesn't know it yet. He's only been around huge, hyper, kinda dumb dogs. He has no idea how awesome a medium-sized, grown-up, intelligent dog can be! I love 'em all, big and dumb and crazy included, but, then, I pretty much love anything with fur (or hooves).
I'm thinking that, when the time comes, the route for us to go would probably be to adopt an adult dog that is already crate- and house-trained. In my browsing lately, I've found plenty of grown-up doggies who need homes, have worn off the hyper-puppy energy, and already have manners.