4 ms·

First, I know a lot of people are very nice to their dogs, but... I live in a large city, and based on the number of dogs locked away in apartments all day bar

• mynameisvlad 3y ago
  That’s an extremely harsh take considering those same owners likely do care a lot about their dogs and shower them with love and affection outside those 8 hours. You’re focusing on a single part of the experience in order to paint the whole thing in a negative light. To put it another way, would they be better off being strays? I doubt it.
  • vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Extremely harsh? Many of these dogs are very smart. What about locking a human away for 8 hours with no internet, no books, no entertainment, nothing to do? And it might be affection they give their dogs but it's not really love if they are so cruel. Besides, they wouldn't be strays if they were never bought, at least not a lot of them if the demand were lower, then so would the breeding and supply.
    • lallysingh 3y ago
      I called that K-12.
      • triceratops 3y ago
        You didn't have books in school?
        • hackable_sand 3y ago
          [flagged]
    • rybosworld 3y ago
      > What about locking a human away for 8 hours with no internet, no books, no entertainment, nothing to do These arguments fall apart when the animal is anthropomorphized. Dogs sleep a lot more than people do, needing around 12 hours. They will take about 4 hours of that sleep in the day regardless if a human is around. It's very breed dependent but, the majority of dogs don't require a significant amount of mental stimulation. For most breeds, a half hour of mental stimulation is plenty. Obviously locking a husky or a cattle dog in an apartment (and this unfortunately does happen), is another story. There are certain breeds you shouldn't go for if you live in an apartment. But there are a lot of breeds that do just fine, even some large ones, like greyhounds.
      • matwood 3y ago
        Exactly. My wife has been rescuing French Bulldogs for years. Even before they were this popular. The problem is they have all sorts of health issues that people don't account for, so they get turned in more than you think. But, their demeanor makes them great apartment dogs. They'll happily sleep 15 hours/day, and even when outside will lay down in the sun to sleep more. Speaking of greyhounds, we fostered an Italian Greyhound one time...and I thought Frenchies were fragile.
    • triceratops 3y ago
      Pre-pandemic, when my partner and I had to go to work and leave the dog alone, we made sure to leave multiple treat toys and puzzles for entertainment, and were never away for longer than 6 hours. Now that we both work from home we can see that the dog mostly sleeps all day, occasionally getting up to bark at some squirrels or passers-by.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • the_af 3y ago
    > To put it another way, would they be better off being strays? I doubt it. Adopting a dog will probably do it good, but a lot of people are buying dogs from dog breeders (and then the mentioned behavior happens, dogs left alone to bark in apartments). Should dogs be purposefully bred as pets, only to be left alone for hours on end?
• Arisaka1 3y ago
  Me and my parents came to an agreement that we will not own a pet while we live in an apartment precisely because of this sentiment. I also disagree with the strawman the other comment presented: The alternative isn't to have the dog fight for survival on the streets as a stray. The alternative is to have the dog owned by a family that can actually provide it with the appropriate environment.
  • poloniculmov 3y ago
    Dogs are very social and they love to be with their humans, your pet is not going to be happier being left alone in the back yard than lounging on the couch with you.
    • JohnBooty 3y ago
      I do not see where the parent poster advocated for leaving a dog alone in the back yard.
      • poloniculmov 3y ago
        They didn't, I'm pointing out that the problem isn't the space (apartment), but that owners aren't providing adequate stimulation and companionship for the dogs.
• rybosworld 3y ago
  That's a pretty extreme take. Being unfit to raise a dog does not imply cruelty.
• newsclues 3y ago
  Lived on a farm with a 100 acres a dog could roam freely in. Live in a suburban house with a small back yard and a small dog doesn't like it and wants to roam. Dogs are great in rural areas, in cities I think they suffer for the sake of humans.
  • matwood 3y ago
    Really depends on the dog. The problem is that people get high activity working dogs and then don't work them.
    • newsclues 3y ago
      It’s not just the exercise but enjoyment of the outdoors and nature.
  • pookha 3y ago
    Not always that simple. I have a giant doberman. I no-shit threw a frisbee for this doberman 72 times yesterday (and ran with her three miles). She gets more exercise than the sheltie I had as a kid that ran leash-free in the country. And if you dare leave her in the backyard her whine could emit high-pitch frequencies that shake glass. She's a city dog that would be lost in the country without a human to hang with.
• sph 3y ago
  I strongly agree and it's apparent not everybody shares this opinion. I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere, my dog used to have an enormous backyard to run in, and was cheeky enough to have made a hole in the fence when that time of the year came and he really wanted to leave for a couple days at a time, either to sire some puppies, or to roll around in horse dung. We used a leash whenever we took him amidst civilization, otherwise he was used to just walking unleashed, with us (mostly getting impatient at how slow humans are), sniffing anything he wanted and peeing on every pole that stood in his path. I miss him every day (died at 15 years old a happy and free half golden retriever mutt). I'd love another dog, but I know they're a type of animal that enjoys a large territory, freedom, as well as a social hierarchy. I will have to suffer with this hole inside of me until I am able to leave the city and offer a dog not only love, but large enough space to run around and not get bored to death. Cats on the other hand, as long as they have food and are left alone, can happily live holed up in a flat. Thrive, I'm not sure, but they have much simpler needs than dogs.
  • temporarely 3y ago
    > Cats on the other hand are much more like humans - cat's dig urbanism, can hang out at a cafe for hours, sit on a couch watching the tube all day, they happily adapt.. So that' why we say "there's a cool cat" but you never hear anything about "cool dogs". So your theory is correct in my opinion: dogs are good rural friends and cats are good urban friends. There is also the matter of dog poop. Has anyone every complained on cat poop on their stoop? Or getting bitten by the neighbor's cat? Or being annoyed at the neighbor's mewing cat? Now a cat on a farm, don't know about that. Wonder how that would work.
    • hsjsbeebue 3y ago
      Small dogs can do OK in your typical suburban block. (Block as in land for single dwelling). They need walks though yes.
    • sph 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_cat We domesticated cats so they would keep rats away from our winter grain storage.
• deleted 3y ago
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• pvg 3y ago
  Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• scrapcode 3y ago
  Unfortunately, this pet-owner energy mismatch extends to those who live in all types of environments. People will often seek a companion putting plenty of research into their looks, size, and how much they shed - without paying mind to the breed's temperament. I work with high-drive waterfowl retrievers that have seemingly endless energy and they can really start to act up without proper frequent exercise. They require multiple 20+ minute sessions of training/running per day that would be equivalent to many miles of running each session.
• JohnBooty 3y ago
  I generally agree that cities and apartments aren't great places for dogs. But a lot of dogs are rescues, and a lot of breeds are quite happy in apartments. There are also a lot of mitigations possible. There are dog walkers and dog sitters who come by and walk the dogs during the daytime. You can have multiple dogs that keep each other company. Etc. based on the number of dogs locked away in apartments all day barking and bored to death with almost no stimulation Respectfully, it seems like you don't know a lot about dogs? A barking dog isn't necessarily distressed. In fact, they're probably not distressed: there are a lot of other ways that dogs show that. They also like to sleep during the daytime. They sleep a lot in general. They are pretty adaptable to our schedules. While I generally don't think we should be breeding dogs at all, the reality is that there are a lot of dogs who need homes (as well as homes who need dogs!) and in the majority of situations I think that getting dogs into homes with a loving family is preferable to euthanizing them.
  • antisthenes 3y ago
    > While I generally don't think we should be breeding dogs at all What do you mean by this? If we don't breed dogs, in about 15 years or so, there will be no dogs left at all.
    • Sprocklem 3y ago
      I can't speak for GP, but I personally find it kind of fucked up that we selectively breed a lot of dogs for certain asthetic traits at the expense of their health. I assume they meant this brand of artificial selection rather than letting dogs reproduce at all.
    • JohnBooty 3y ago
      Right. I wasn't very clear. I perhaps made it sound like I didn't want any more dogs to be born. To be clearer, my wish is that we could curtail breeding until supply matched demand. Rather than the current situation where lots of dogs are put down because there are more dogs than homes.
• dazc 3y ago
  I am not a lover of dogs, which some people seem to find offensive? Yet, people who are cruel to dogs are, generally, dog owners and not people like me who just give them a wide berth. Anyone who thinks an animal enjoys being locked indoors all day with no understanding of why, or for how long it will be, is a much lesser person than me.
• the_common_man 3y ago
  They are pets and not friends
  • vouaobrasil 3y ago
    They are neither. They are living beings that we just happened to have modified through artificial selection to be our slaves.