by Ethel Smith

Created on: September 13, 2008   Last Updated: December 31, 2011

To my mind the very word 'Pet' puts the animal into a different type of dog category. After all, most dogs that are kept outdoors are working dogs. They may be sheepdogs or guard dogs but if they are a pet that is secondary to their work.

If you have a pet dog whose main purpose in your life, is to be a pet, then it should be housed indoors. What is the point after all in having a pet that you only meet with on an occasional basis. I would think that most pet dog owners would want that little animal to share their home in everyway possible.

Bear in mind also the type or breed of dog. Small pet dogs, which would once upon a time have been referred to as lapdogs, would be lost living outdoors in a kennel. Dogs in general these days are domesticated animals, that man has helped evolve for his own personal reasons. Sometimes a dog as a pet provides companionship and love, more often than not becoming part of the family. With this in mind would you want your pet sleeping outdoors in all weathers?.

Sure dogs can be smelly at times, and may cause some mess, but a loving pet owner knows that this is part of being a dog owner. If you are not up to all the challenges, of having a dog as a pet, should you really even be considering buying one?.

If you keep your dog outdoors are you really being a responsible owner?. For all you know the dog could be getting a little wild and dangerous. Some dogs soon start to revert back to their roots and can become a safety issue, especially around young children.

Think also about where the dog or pet owner lives. In the countryside it is often more usual for a pet dog to live outdoors. However in the city this could be dangerous, even for an animal. If it was kept outdoors, even in your own garden, would it be safe. There are many unscrupulous people around who may steal your dog, for various reasons or purposes. Some might just sell the dog on, but even this could be for animal laboratory testing, or worse. Other people are just cruel and get their kicks out of tormenting and torturing dogs. Far fetched as this may sound I know from my dog rescue work that such things happen all too often these days.

Personally I would never keep a pet dog outdoors. For me my two dogs are pets that have as much of a place in my home as I do. After all they did not choose to live with me, did they?. When I brought them into my home I committed myself to providing them with love, food, shelter, care and warmth and this did not mean letting or making them live outdoors.

If I had wanted a guard dog, to live outdoors, then I would have chosen a different type of dog altogether. For those of you who feel that a pet dog should live outdoors please make sure that you consider everything that I have said, and that you still treat the animal with respect, providing it with food and shelter. That is the very least that you can do for it, when you consider the loyalty a dog rewards you with constantly.

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