Great idea, Monica. Let him in only when he’s good. Keep him in short leash to make sure he doesn’t stray, and make sure he doesn’t go marking his territory. If you can train him to put down the toilet seat, that will be a plus.

Even Jenna’s Snickers could have gone squirrel hunting and never returned if it had been different place or different timing. I think it was really lucky that Snickers just turned around and let her catch him, because if there were enough temptations around (squirrels, rabbits, birds, or anything that moves), he could have been gone. Can you say if your shibas love you, they’ll never try to run? — answer is no. I don’t know about other breeds though.

I saw two escaped neighbhor dogs roaming around last year (Retriever and Lab), and because they were slow and food motivated, I was able to coax them with treats and help them return to their owners. If he was a squirrel hunting shiba inu, I probably wouldn’t have been able to catch him.

Every summer the dogs and I go to Camp Unleashed and for 3 days the dogs live off leash. They are content to stay pretty close to the cabin. And this weekend we are off to the Outer Banks where the dogs will run off leash on the beach for a week.

Now let’s talk about keeping men as companion animals. While I currently do not own this type of companion animal, in my opinion, a man should be kept in the yard for the majority of the day and night. Thoughts?

Anyway, I sold my home, and Jinx and I went to live out there. I fully expected Jinx to continue to be an inside dog–and my husband was actually looking forward to having an indoor dog–but Jinx surprised me by actually deciding himself to live principally outdoors. I guess it sort of is in keeping with my boss’s view that he was, at heart, a wild thing and established his own pack, as it were, with the two females (we had our second rescue doxie by the time Jinx and I moved). He started becoming less and less interested in coming inside after playing outside all day, and these days he gets agitated if we keep him inside too long. He wants to be out hunting, or with the girls, or “patroling” the back yard.

But by no means did I or my husband banish him outside. We were both disappointed, actually, since we were hoping for a lap dog.

Really, my relationship with Jinx didn’t change much after that realization. I just stopped thinking that a dog could somehow ofter me emotional support that was equal to what either myself or another human could.

Which came first, Anon, the man or the realization that your dog meant too much to you?

I am sorry, but I just can’t imagine a woman banishing her dog to the yard without a man being involved. I mean, think about it. Why not let the dog continue to sleep in the house? What does that have to do with anything?

As far as the scientific angle of dog emotions, I am certainly no expert, that’s for sure, but in college ( many, many moons ago ), I worked in my university’s school of veterinary medicine, as the student secretary to the lead research vet. At some point, I mentioned a particular dog’s grief response to the separation from his family (the dog was abandoned by his family, and ‘donated’ to the University, and my kindly boss re-homed him). The vet said that actually, the dog wasn’t mourning the loss of the family itself, but his own separation from his social group or ‘pack’.

According to the vet, the paramount sense a dog has is scent, and this is the main lense through which a dog ‘sees’ or senses his world and environment. So when the scent of his humans (or other dogs in his pack) is gone (not the human itself but rather the SCENT of the human), his daily routine and sense of security is obliterated and he becomes confused and disoriented. He is now a lone wolf without a pack and this is extremely distressing to him, since now, ‘social hunter’ that he is, how will he get food? How will he defend himself? Will he ever be accepted by another pack?

So said the vet, the dog’s depression wasn’t like a human missing a loved one, but more akin to a human being depressed over losing his job and wondering how he’s going to pay the bills.

Dog lover, that I am, I totally dismissed that ; the dog looked so, so mournful. But then the vet took a blanket out of a bag the family’d left for the dog and he had me lightly pat the blanket over the front of my scrubs. Then we went back into the kennel and released the dog, who went absolutely insane, jumping all over me with joy like I was the love of his life. He was responding, the vet said, not to me as an individual but to my scent, recognizing me as a fellow pack member, my actual identity and individually not mattering one bit. He said it was like our jobless human recognizing a member of his former company (not by face, but by the company logo on his ID badge, maybe; just recognizing him in some way as part of the group) and responding with glee because the member of the company might get him his old job back.

From what I understand, that’s the reason shelters and vet hospitals frequently request ‘scented’ objects from the dog’s old home. As long as they have the ‘pack scent’ he’s used to, the humans in a dog’s life–provided they’re kind to him–can come and go interchangably.

Again, nothing wrong with that at all. I’ve always been pro-dog. I think they add a lot to our lives. But like my dear old boss mused–and believe me, you’ve never met a kinder, bigger lover of all creatures, great and small, including humans, than he was –once while examining a dog’s eyes, and I’ve never forgotten this: “People are so beautiful. They look into a dog’s feral eyes and what do they see? Nobility, honesty, fidelity, bravery, the capacity for unconditional love. If only people knew that this [patting the dog] beautiful little animal is a wild thing, with wild ways, and that all those high virtues they see in their dog’s eyes, are really their own uniquely and wonderfully human virtues, reflected back.”

Personally, I think Anon’s experience was extreme. I believe she would have found something else to bury her emotions in if her doxy hadn’t been there. Her situation was more about her own emotional issues than about animals in society in general.

The term devil’s advocate really just means advocating (promoting and/or arguing for) the opposite side of a discussion whether you believe it or not. Someone can “play devil’s advocate” if no one else is taking that side or simply to make a discussion more interesting. It is not necessarily a bad thing. Other than the harshness of her first comment though, Anon really hasn’t been confrontational or abusive in sharing her views here, so I welcome her to share her reasons for feeling the way she does!

Diana – I appologize if my statement displeased you or anyone else.
Sorry!
To me it seems that anon has been trying to push the buttons.
Yet it might be a very rude comment t call someone that way.
However, I did not expect to hear that from someone who wrote
“she(anon) seems to be just playing devil’s advocate.”
“devil’s avocate” is a very strong expression, isn’t it?