Indoors or Outdoors?

[grizabella]

Where do your hounds live?

Bella's definitely an indoors girl, especially when the weather's bad, then she hates going out. She stays in the house when we're out, with the run of most of the house (bedrooms, bathroom closed off), and she has toys to play with. She sleeps in my room, but in her own bed (usually, she's recently been rejecting her usual bed, but tonight she's reverted to sleeping in it- hurray!)

[Gazinghound]

Indoors all the time, too; mostly by my parents' decision, we've had four prior "outdoor dogs" (Jack and Boomer the Beagles, Casey the Great Dane/Mastiff, and Floyd the Bloodhound)...but I personally wouldn't get another dog (even a drooly, jowly one!) without intending to let him/her live inside if s/he wanted to (some dogs just come to you already used to living outside, and love it--that was the case with all four of ours. Jack I was more of an indoor guy before we kids started crawling around on the floors and sucking up dog hair, lol, but even he was more comfortable living in the yard with a cozy doghouse.)

Our dogs go in and out all day--if it's really nasty, Ulla and Jack will use the porch as a restroom. So far Jack hasn't had to be left alone much because he's small enough to be taken with us quite often, in the car and sometimes his crate if we do have to leave him at all. (Yesterday he was in a pet-friendly store for the first time, and met an adorable Labradoodle and Wheaten terrier. My dad held him for a few minutes and then brought him back to sniff around the RVs outside because he was shivering--guess the excitement and novelty of it got him a little nervous!)

When the big two are home alone, we also close off certain rooms just to protect anything we might not want them to get (e.g., my room, and the office...sometimes a few others, but we like to try and leave it feeling as "normal" and comfortable as possible.) They do well, usually with minimal mess-age, despite Rusty's craziness. I think he's started to settle down somewhat recently, even without the Thundershirt. The other day I was the only person here, and they barely seemed to mind the absence of everyone else--just frolicked merrily in and out of the back door the whole time. It was nice. Usually if most people are missing, they'll want to follow you around for a while (at least one of them), and they're hypersensitive to every little movement and sound.

They sleep wherever they please, which is usually on living room furniture, my bed, or my parents' bed (never mind all the hair and the human displacement and squeezage and discomfort that may occur--they're just necessary side effects!) For naps throughout the day, there's the boys' blanket-bed on the kitchen floor; Jack's nest-style bed now nestled behind the easy chair (because he ruined the interior of the other one that was back there); and Ulla's kitchen bed, in her spot underneath the little table between the fridge and a wall.

[grizabella]

Tiggy (Golden Retriever) was a bit-of-both girl at first, she was outdoors when we were out, and usually indoors when we were in. After my parents split up she was at one house, and I was at the other for quite a while, and during that time she wasn't allowed in the house at all. When she was living with us again, not long before she passed, she became a bit-of-both dog again.

During the day Bella usually sleeps on my bed, or on the pouffe-thing in the lounge which until last night was her temporary night-time bed as well. She's occasionally allowed on the sofar's, if Mum's in a particularly good mood about it!

[Gazinghound]

I think the one time we left them outside while we were gone for a significant period was when we went to a hockey game a few years back...it was an accident that we didn't realize until too late, and the poor things got rained on. Aww, Tiggy was pretty lucky, having the best of both worlds most of the time! ^^

I'm glad Bella's decided to stop snubbing her bed.
I kept suggesting we try one of those furniture covers that are supposed to help keep the hair off, but as my mom pointed out, then you'd still have to remove them every time a person wanted to use the furniture, to protect their clothes...and if people are on it, then at least one dog will surely want to be on it, possibly on them or very close to them...so the hair's still going to get where it's going to get, and then you've got to keep washing those cloths over and over and over. It's not very practical here to expect the dogs to only use the furniture when you've got it covered, and vice versa for humans. Better to just continuously vacuum and sweep the hair away, we figure, because they're constantly on and off the sofas, chairs, beds, etc.