Poll: Your ideal life with dogs...

Am curious. :)

Other: My ideal life would be a large fenced in backyard. The back door of the house would have a dog door on it so the dogs could go in and out as they pleased. On rainy or wintery days I would have a big nice sunroom for them to enjoy and that way they could still see what was going on outside. I would still take them for walks and bike rides because I enjoy walking/biking as well as they do.

Reality: I have 2 acres not fenced. I have a 100ft trolley Lillie is tied to when I am not outside with her and she wants to be outside, really only used in the mornings when she has to go out to potty and release some energy from being in the house all night. Cheyanne and Kujo dont have to be supervised so they come in and out as they please. On rainy or wintery days Cheyanne and Kujo gladly sit in the house all day. Lillie will gladly play in the rain but the cold will make her retreat to her crate. I go for a 2 mile walk and then a 2 mile bike ride every morning and do the same at night. So Lillie gets 8 miles of exercise, Cheyanne gets 6, and Kujo gets 4.  

 I have the ideal set up for me. A house with a small back yard so that I don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining it. We do most of our exercising away from the home (parks, hiking, frisbee, etc)

I would like a large backyard so we could exercise both in the yard and away from it.  

When I see videos of Becca's place, I really yearn to have that kind of space. Hiking on my own property would be a dream come true. I assumed the part about dogs coming when called, but reluctantly, meant that they loved thier life outside and not that they didn't want to come be with the humans. In my perfect dream world, I'd have a farm but very near the ocean

We have a fenced in back yard but the dogs are not out there by themselves as we are either out there outside with them or else they are in the house with us. We have lots of Hawks around here and so we don`t just do the thing of letting them out alone for their safety and our peace of mind.

Really our life is pretty good, but there's always room for improvement.

For summer, I'd like a home on the Northern California Coast somewhere between Eureka and the Oregon Border. The beaches are uncrowded, go for miles, sandy, and off leash is allowed with voice control. High tempetatures are in the upper 60's and lows in the 50's. Plus, there's the redwood forests and lots of off leash places to go there. Walking distance to one of the two would be nice, but it's not essential.

Unfortunately, it rains about 70 inches per year, with little in the summer, so we'd need a winter abode too. I really like the Sonoran desert in the winter, and would either like to have a large amount of land or to live near an off leash area.

We currently have a pretty big yard and the dogs usually have indoor and outdoor access. We're very close to the bike trail and just a few minutes from a 450 acre park, but we lack good off leash areas.  I pretty much consider a fenced yard (not invisible) to be essential. I'd like to have more space/privacy, but that's mostly from personal desire rather than if it would improve the dog's life.

Oh, it's essential to have good veterinarians wherever we go. Floyd doesn't like thunder, so we need to keep that low. Where we are, we only get thunder/ligthening a couple of times per year.

I think our setup is pretty sweet. We have 4 dogs, with the puppies kept barricaded in a large play area in our garage/dog room. (It's big, clean, well-lit, organized, and did I mention CLEAN?! We mop the apoxied floor several times weekly). In the play area, we have tons of toys, and some carpet and old comforters for them to sleep on (no more beds since Cooper decided they were toys, not something to sleep on). There is a doggie door that goes out of the back door of the garage/ their play area into a concrete pen with a large dog house, and a gate that opens into our large fenced back yard. They generally only go onto the grass supervised so they don't ruin the grass by digging or get themselves dirty by laying in the dirt hole that they creatd prior to the pen under the picnic table. The two older ladies stay in the regular part of the garage on their big fluffy beds (since they long got over their chew-phase) and all are welcome in the house after a good grooming. They have beds a plenty in the garage and the house, and the garage is kept open with a gate stopping entry into the house, and a fan on so they have AC in there during the summer and heat in the winter; it's always the same temperature as the house.

We live across the street from a large field, and right down the street from the state park, so they go out for walks and swims all the time, and love to play ball in the back yard several times a day.

I picked the house with big backyard and dogs mostly inside but this is assuming that a backyard can be about 5 acres of land. Larger than that would be too much.

I would have about half an acre fenced in for a regular backyard (hanging around and potty times) but would love to be able to go walk and play off-leash on the rest which would be fenced too. I would have an agility area set up somewhere (I think Flem would love that as much as Spip would hate it).

As far as inside accommodations, I envision an inside room for them to be while we work; it would have open crates and possibly hammock type begs (they eat fluffy dog beds !), no-slip tiling on the floor and part of the walls, natural light coming in, rugs (they do not eat rugs, lol), a few toys (because there are only a few that Spip would not destroy, risking an obstruction), air-conditioning and ceiling fan. This inside set-up would include a pantry type room for all their stuff and a dog/human friendly wash area. Their room would open thru a doggy door to a large outside kennel (part concrete floor part grassy area) so they could go in or out at their leisure. When we are not at work, they would, like now, be wherever we are in the house.

Not only do I need to play the lottery but I need to win it too.

 I picked 'other'.  My ideal would be to live on the farm I lived on in Virgina.  160 acres of rolling farmland in a spectacular area.  This place was my nirvanna.  And I would have Bugsy and at least one other dog - weim, ridgeback, gsp, or mix like Bugs.

I just finished reading Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote and that would be an awesome life for me.

Those are the ideals

We have a pretty good setup here though  - a good size house means Bugsy doesn't seem SO big and we have an acre with the invisible fence and Bugsy loves to inspect the entire grounds several times daily.  There aren't any really messy areas so he doesn't drag too much in with him.  Could really use a mudroom though

Also we live in a nice community that only has traffic from residents so it is very quiet, lots of trees and natural areas (all homes are on a minimum of an acre, some are on 4 acres) and we can access a 650 acre lake from within the community so we don't have to drive there or walk on busy roads

So it's pretty good here but I could go VERY rural and be happier

kpwlee

I just finished reading Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote and that would be an awesome life for me.

Sorry OT, but I'm just starting to read it now.
I'm at the point where Merle went through the trash.

 posted here

My set up is pretty good.  The house is not huge, but decent sized so that Max has a lot of space inside.  The yard is also decent sized, though Max doesn't spend much time out there unless someone else is outside.  He gets his exercise on walks, trips to the dog park and frantically chasing squirrels that run along the fence and up the neighbors tree.

Joyce

fuzzy_dogs_mom

My set up is pretty good.  The house is not huge, but decent sized so that Max has a lot of space inside. 

Ditto. We have a big yard, which is great for frisbee, agility and fetch. There are also critters for Lexi to find. After a four-floor walk-up apartment, I feel like we are in heaven.