All alone

[Shannon_C]

When i go out my 3 are left in the kitchen in there crates except for Charlie as we only have a small kitchen and Charlie's crate would not fit in with the others. The longest they have been left is 5 hours at the most.

[Mutt_Lady]

When we all go out (which is slim), Kyra is crated. Once she was crated for 8 hours because I was at work and Kevin was visiting family in London, Ontario. We both left fairly early and then got home late. Right away we took K out though. I felt so awful for leaving her.

Does anyone else get those puppy dog eyes when they lock their dogs in the crate and are walking away? I try not to make eye contact or I'll wind up going down and hugging her. :(

But she is not often left alone anymore because I am always home with her and a bunch of other dogs in our house. It's very convenient because she gets twice as much attention because mommy is usually always home. :) Now I'm probably babying her TOO much, rather than not enough...

[imported_Debbie]

I guess I'm kind of lucky as I work out of my house so I'm here 24/7......(that has it's pro's and con's)
and when I do have to go somewhere my hubby is usually home or visa versa.....
When we do go out together on those monumental occasions such as Birthdays, or Anniversaries...... :lol: :lol: the Grrlz get free run of the house. They are never left for over 5hr.
And they get pottied before we leave, haven't had an accident yet.....(knock on wood) :wink:
I don't have a fenced in yard, but I would never leave a dog out in case of possible escape, dognapping, or just plain rotten neighborhood kids that would tease/torment. :evil:

[bk_blue]

When people are home, Bk is inside/outside.

When people are not home, he is outside.

He sleeps outside as well.

This arrangement works. My sister does this with Lizie as well, but Lizie goes over to Leo's (her dog boyfriend haha) 90% of the time she is not home, so she's absolutely stuffed at the end of the day and sleeps like a baby.

I remember mentioning in another thread a while ago that this is what many Australians tend to do, as most of us who live in the cities have fenced yards. Personally I would have a lot of trouble/guilt over keeping at least a medium-sized very active dog inside all day if I wasn't home. However I can certainly understand those with purebred dogs would be very anxious about leaving a dog outside all day. I'm certainly not saying one way is better than the other, but it would be *my* preference to do what I do already. :)

[Horsefeathers!]

Since one of our dogs bit a neighbor's kid (through the fence? he claimed) and the neighborhood kids have such a notion to harrass our dogs, we can't leave them outside unsupervised anymore. If we lived further away from town and didn't have crappy neighbors with rotten kids, I'd love to be able to let them roam freely (fenced yard) during the day. I'm all for it.

At least our larger dogs do have free run of the house when we're gone.

Hopefully, next year, I'll be working from home.

[Malamum]

Even though I will leave my dogs in our backyard with no worries what so ever, one thing I’m not a fan of is dogs in the front yard. Especially yards that have tubular style fencing rather than a solid fence. Most front yards aren’t fenced around here but there are a few that are. I hate walking along the footpath past a front yard that has a dog in it as in my experience most of the dogs that are in such a yard bark excessivley at anything that walks past. I guess they get a bit over stimulated by all the action happening around them.

My yard is at the back of the house and a person just walking along the street wouldn’t even know there are dogs in there. We do have a fairly quiet street so there wouldn't be many people walking past anyway.

[Horsefeathers!]

We have a similar setup, Malamum. Our backyard is fenced, but not the front. Apparently, people feel like they have more business behind my house than on the roadway in front of it. :o