I had an apartment and then a new neighbor moved in next door. She put her dog in a cage that was in her bedroom closet. That bedroom closet was on the wall opposite my headboard side of my bed. Of course, when she went to work that dog would bark all day. I attempted to complain to the apartment manager but guess what happened? Nothing happened because that apartment manager also had a dog that she put in a cage and kept in her apartment while she was away.
In a different apartment I was on the ground floor. There was a lady above me who would let her dog do its business on her concrete patio which was above mine and then she would sweep it over the edge until my patio below looked like a minefield of dog turds.
Dogs need yards and should not be locked up in a cage or in an apartment nor should their barking invade the space of others.
If you own a dog, live in an apartment, and the noise from that dog’s barking is inside the apartments of your neighbors then you are a shitty inconsiderate person!
It’s fine to have doggy beds or those doggy houses. If it was a thing they couldn’t freely go in and out of, that’s just a cage and that’d obviously be another matter.
I mean you didn’t have to but I’m sure it makes things simpler than waking up and making sure they’re getting up to no good and training them without the cage. It does often like an easy way out. Poor doggies.
I feel like you’re picturing a battery cage like are used in those inhumane factory farms. That is not the case for what I’m describing.
The crate I have is 4 feet tall, 5 feet long, and 4 feet deep. The puppy was a 5 month old Jack Russell that weighed 16 pounds. Babies in play pens are more constrained than she was. Plus, she was only in there overnight from about midnight to 6 am with pee breaks at 2 and 4am… And that was only for the first week. After that and since, she’s slept in the bed. A few weeks after that, once she was on a pee schedule, she was able to be given free reign of the house at night (e.g. I stopped closing the bedroom door at night).
I’m generally against crating because most people don’t use them correctly. Dogs like to have safe spaces. Eventually, the whole house becomes their safe space, but it takes time for them to adjust; the crate, when used correctly, can give them a space space until they feel at home.
I’ve always wondered how people insisting on the cages deal with the idea of locking the dog up being good and necessary for the dog. Do some just consider it not feeling safe for the dog unless the human can lock it up and make sure the dog can’t leave? Because what separates the cages/crates from a doggy bed with a roof is that lockable door.
Giving the dog their own safe place is one thing, locking them in there is another.
It does sound far separated from people routinely putting their dog in a cage for 8+ hours because they can’t be arsed to train them. Though I’ve just considered pee in unfortunate places and other “misbehaviour” just something you sign up for when you get a puppy. Takes a while to train them. Sometimes it’s a big inconvenience and temporarily using a cage to make sure they don’t fuck everything up would be alright, but it’s more of a crutch and definitely not something you always do as a matter of course.