Tell the truth.. do you leave your dog home alone?

[Be1atrix]

Just that really. As a family we're all desperate for a dog but work full time. We would pay for a dog walker to come in at lunchtime.

In The Doghouse section people who leave their dogs at home get shot down. But surely there's people who work full time who have them? How do they manage?

We have a dog walker who walks my dog for an hour each day I work. Most of the people I work with have a dog and they leave them alone all day, they think I'm crazy for paying what I do for the dog walker but theres no way I could leave mine - she could probably cross her legs for the whole day but I would feel so guilty about her being alone.

”Quite what these hordes of dog walkers do for the rest of the day is a mystery“

@TreacherousPissFlap maybe they count their money? My dog walker takes up to nine other dogs at the same time, drives them all in a van to the beach. That’s £150 for what amounts to about 2.5 hours work with all the pick ups and drop offs. they also have other jobs throughout the day like feeding cats and other quite random pet related tasks.

Treacherous dog walkers will take 6-8-10 dogs all at once obviously. I see them on my local huge common all trotting along together.

@TwiddleMuff ...but they also have insurance to pay out, fuel for their van, maybe they even lease it and business insurance.
Of course self employed earn more per day, they have to as they don't have the luxury of paid holidays or sick pay.
And what about very hot days? A good dog walker would say that they couldn't do walks on days over 25c.
Imagine the lost income on that!
So no, they are not 'rolling in it'.

Quite what these hordes of dog walkers do for the rest of the day is a mystery

A friend of mine is a dog walker. He walks 3 or 4 dogs in the daytime while his DD is at school, and does a few evening bar shifts after his OH is home.
I think it must be a good, part time thing for parents of school age children, retired people etc. Certainly not a mortgage paying role, though!

I don’t know the details but ours is doing okay - he’s just bought a new van and hired an employee to keep up with demand. So there’s clearly some money to be had in walking dogs!

@Tensixtysix dog walkers always appear on those buzzfeedy listicles “ten surprising jobs that pay really well” 😂

It depends on many factors.

The most important is the age and temperament of the dog. If you do this with an energetic breed puppy it's going to be a disaster. If you do it with an adult dog who is very settled then it could work. The dog's temperament is also important, many dogs are very attached to their owners so need to be with them and not anyone else.

You also have to keep in mind that you need to devote all your before and after work time to dog friendly pursuits otherwise you would be leaving the dog alone for much longer than your working hours. So on a cold and rainy morning, when you are running late for work the dog may only get a 15 minute walk, then you are off to work, then you have a cinema date in the evening and the dog has just spent much longer alone than expected.

Dogs that enjoy doggy daycare may be more suited to this lifestyle, but keep in mind that not every dog will fit into the daycare setting.

I also live in France where dogs are left in gardens all day and all night. They bark incessantly and owners often resort to electric shock collars to limit the barking - from bad, to worse, to downright cruel.

BTW doggy day care was a thing in the US in the 90s. I remember my dog training teacher coming back from Karen Pryor's place in the mid-90s with mythical tales of an amazing place with daycare for puppies, young dogs, oldies, with activities and training during the day. It's great the tread has spread to the UK. In France the odd daycare centre has been popping up in the last 5 years (by which I mean, I know of one, 3 hours away from us!).

You need to use common sense and match dog to your lifestyle. As pp have mentioned circumstances change and usually the dog adjusts with it. I think there is an element of the world gone mad with this!!! Alot of it is people humanising and treating their animals like children. Some dogs live in kennels 24/7 as they are workers etc . I tell you what really baffles me is dogs being in kennels is preferable to a family due to both people working.

Most of my neighbours have dogs, a lot of them work. You can hear the dogs barking pretty much constantly. I have no idea why they have dogs. DH would love one, I'm ambivalent but we both agree that there will be no dog until we retire.

But surely it can't be safe for the mythical dog walker to walk 8-10 dogs at once

OTOH there's a new day care place opened near us which we considered for DDog2, this was until we found out it was £42 a day and we had to book a minimum number of days on the same rota (no good for us as I work shifts)

We're looking at labs/golden retrievers if that makes a difference.

So the most human-orientated breeds going, and you want to leave then without company for 9 hours.

Labs are the first to be rehomed from mixed breed rescues, so you're either looking at lying to a breed-specific rescue (and likely getting one with issues who is especially unsuited to being left alone) or getting a puppy, again, the least suitable type to be left alone for long periods of tlw all day.

Come on. You're not really as selfish as this is making you look. I understand desperately wanting a dog, but you're not in the situation where it would be fair to the dog. Put the dog first.

DDog is left for a maximum of 6 hours, four days a week. He's perfectly content and we make sure we give plenty of attention when we get home. He also shares our bed so he's close to us at night.

Our downstairs neighbours have a beagle and they used to use doggy daycare (I'd see the daycare van picking her up in the morning when I left for work) but it looks like they've stopped using the service. They now leave her home and she whines, howls and cries from the moment they leave - hours and hours on end with no respite. A couple of weeks ago they went out and the poor thing howled from dinner time until after 1am. I'm pretty sure they don't know she does it but I have no idea how to broach it, especially as we're not always the most silent neighbours either.

No - I waited until I could work from home before having a dog.

What is the point if you're never there for them anyway? Feeding and walking become just another chore if you're tired from being out all day.

Yes I leave the dog. We had a dog walker who came in at lunch time for an hour. We also did not do any after work activities unless someone could take the dog out. He would also go and spend time with my parents for the week if my sister was not working or my dad was home. Weekends largely spent so the dog was not home alone as long as during the week.

Now I am on maternity leave that is a different matter. Currently lying in bed with the dog. Need to get some supplies for tea tonight so we will walk down to the shops and back

Have you looked into how much exercise and mental stimulation retrievers need? They are wonderful, trainable dogs with beautiful looks and fabulous temperaments BUT they are very mentally and physically active dogs which, as adults, should have 2 hours of good quality exercise (not just human paced walking) daily, as well as brain games. They are not couch potatoes (even the chunkier show type labs still need good quality exercise and to be kept stimulated) do not underestimate their needs.

Mine is a lab and the thought of him being left alone for 8+ hours a day is both sad and scary. He would be terribly lonely and very, very bored. He is crate trained and loves it as a quiet place to retreat to during the day (door open) and sleep in at night (door closed) but would hate to be shut in there all day and night, only to be let out for a few hours in the evening and an hour or so before work/school. It’s no life for an active working breed. My boy couldn’t have the free run of the house all day, as he would chew everything in boredom and distress (and he is not a chewer - though obviously went through that mouthy retriever puppy stage for his first year or so). He’d go stir crazy.

Look at the ‘cons’ of each breed too.

I would be very surprised if you were allowed to take a dog with your work commitments, from a breed specific rescue. They tend to be even more stringent than the general places.

TreacherousPissFlap, well, our old dog ran away from the dogwalker a couple of times - once she rang to say there had been a thunderstorm while she was walking them and DDog and a brown lab ran off and were eventually found in a housing estate later that afternoon, about a mile away from the woods where she'd been, having crossed a major A road. Little horror! Another time he absconded from her near her own house and was found at the nearby farm.

In neither case do I blame her - she was very clear that her business model was to walk dogs in a pack, and we benefitted greatly from her time. She used to pick DDog up first and he got an hour's van ride (which he loved), 1 or 2 hours' walk, then another hour in the van dropping all the other dogs off, then eventually be dropped off himself. He was usually out of the house for 3 hours but it was often more like 5. She was a great improvement over the previous one, who claimed to take dogs for an hour but actually only took him for 20 minutes (which I discovered when I was at home ill one day and he didn't know I was upstairs).

A puppy would chew everything. A friend recently had to leave hers for an hour unexpectedly and came home to find he had chewed off part of the skirting board, sofa and tv unit in that time. Rescues around here won't adopt to anyone who works full time and you need a letter from work to prove that, plus they do inspections for a couple of months after to spot check. The breeders are the same. I don't think your life is set up for a dog. I would also worry about your cost remark, dogs can be pretty expensive health wise and with vaccinations, food etc.

We are desperate for a dog as my DH has had them all his life, but he works full time and my health means I may not be able to walk them during the day. We don't have one because of this.

Not for more than a couple of hours. Personally I don’t think it’s fair to leave a dog all day alone even with a dog walker. They adore and need company and imo would be bored and pretty sad being left all day.

Yes I leave my dog when I'm at work I finish at 3 and work 3x days a week

Ambush, you say your neighbours dog whines all day when they are out but say yours is fine, how do you know? Maybe neighbours have to listen to yours whining and barking all day so thought they'd give you dose of your own medicine?

I know if my neighbours are out because their dog howls non-stop when it’s alone. My neighbours leave their dog in all day with one coming back at lunch time to let it out, but the poor wee thing is clearly unhappy and stressed. TBF, it’s a high maintenance bred, not the kind that would laze around all day.

I live on the continent and every dog owner I know leaves their dogs at home when they go to work (except maybe for the puppy stage because of incontinence).

@WaxOnFeckOff

Because I have doggy cctv which shows him trotting around, playing or sleeping the whole time. He is very chilled out and lazy.

The neighbours also both work full time so wouldn't be home to hear it if he did...?