Living in a box

As the more intuitive among you might have guessed, one of my interests is dogs; their care, health, breeding etc, and one of the things that gets me warm under the collar is people’s less-than-appropriate treatment of them. The indulgence of ‘furbabies’ (now there’s a word that makes me want to vomit) is as much a form of cruelty as a whipping – dogs are separate species, not deformed hairy children, and should be treated in a manner suitable for their needs. A dog’s needs are really very simple; basically he needs food, exercise, shelter, medical treatment when required and, because he’s of a social species, he needs company. Having a single dog in the home is fine as long as he gets the opportunity to socialise with his own kind several times a week, as well as the company of his owners. This is one aspect where too many dogs are let down. Too many dogs are left ‘home alone’ while their owners work full time – and what’s worse, many are crated for these hours. Now a dog crate can be very useful – it’s a secure space for him when travelling and a familiar secure den if you and your dog are staying away from home. Crated dogs are more likely to be allowed in hotel rooms, for example, rather than the totally unacceptable alternative of having to stay in the car overnight. Crates are handy with a puppy – he can be popped into it if you need to go shopping, knowing that he can’t eat your furniture or electrocute himself on your wiring in your absence. They can be handy for house-training during the night; you have the pup in his crate by your bed and, because they don’t like to soil their beds, when he needs to relieve himself in the night the noise he makes in his discomfort will wake the owner who can then take him out to the garden before popping him back to bed again.

With a blanket over the top and the door open, an adult dog has a secure den where he feels safe.

However some people – and from what I’ve read on various canine internet fora, more commonly in America – misuse crates badly. Firstly, because they’ve heard that crating helps house-train, they assume that simply putting the pup into the crate means that he’ll magically be able to contain his bladder and bowels for hours, not realising that they’ll need to get up during the night to take him out instead of having him mess on the floor if he wasn’t crated. Forcing him to soil his bed only causes distress and sets housetraining back weeks. I've never used crates for my dogs - I dislike broken nights so I'd rather mop up the kitchen floor in the morning when I'm housetraining a puppy!

Even worse, too many adult dogs are locked in their crates, like a battery chicken, the whole day while their owners are at work. Then again if the people go out for the evening. Then the dog’s alone all night too, while the people are asleep. Some poor creatures spend 20 out of 24 hours locked in a space barely big enough to turn around and the owners think it’s acceptable! No, no, no! Misuse of crates like this is out-and-out cruelty. The maximum length of time a dog should be crated is about 4 hours, preferably less. As a rule of thumb if a dog has been crated the owner should release him before the owner needs to use the lavatory. If the owner's uncomfortable, the dog might be as well. It only takes a little imagination and consideration.

Why do so many people fail to realise that animal ownership (any animal, not just dogs) is a privilege, not a right? If they can’t give a dog the treatment it deserves they should rethink their options, and if they can’t change their lifestyle to suit the dog, they shouldn’t inflict such a miserable existence on the poor thing. It's not as if it's that difficult to pay someone to come and take your dog for a walk at lunchtime, and stay in of an evening if you've been out all day.

You get told "Oh, he's quite happy, he sleeps all day." Erm ... what are his options? He can hardly read a book, or watch TV, or surf the net, can he? He's trapped, and all he can do to stop going out of his mind with boredom is sleep his life away until he dies. The dogs are the victims here – they have no choice. It’s not very different to the existence that was, and in areas still is, inflicted on the Romanian orphans.

(By the way, that dog seen on the far side of the canal at the MongMeet, and that caused such curiosity, wasn't a Labradoodle or any of the other fashionable overpriced crossbreeds. It was simply an ordinary standard poodle.)