Our dog is a ‘found’ dog. Someone threw her out (I think literally, she limped for a while) on the corner near our house. She was 2yrs or so old according to the vet, wasn’t fixed or house broken either. We had her fixed and shotted and she gets regular heart worm pills.
She will NOT, however, go inside any enclosure. At all. We bought her a really nice doghouse. She refused to go inside. Even with venison temptations. She won’t even go on our porch. Much less inside the house. She must have been mistreated prior to being abandoned. *sigh*. She’s a really sweet dog though and always gentle as she can be with the kids, if a bit exciteable. She’s in a carport with fenced in grassy area about 30X50 so she has protection and a yard and hubby built her her own ‘roofless’ doghouse that we put under the carport. We put cedar chips and DE in it and she’s been fine ever since. She HATES deer though. I know when the deer are eating my garden because she wants those deer so badddddd. LOL.
Fortunately for us it’s mild here in the wintertime and we’ve got the outside area for her to be ‘free’ and yet out of inclement weather if she wants. We debated taking her to the no kill shelter in Jackson/Rankin but decided against it. Most of those dogs never get adopted and spend their lives in a 5X6 concrete dog pen surrounded by umpteen other barking dogs. That would drive our dog nuts. She loves to dig :) And chase chipmunks. And frogs. And crickets. And she can hear the UPS truck coming a mile away. She hates the UPS dude.
She’s my garden dog companion. If our road wasn’t so busy I’d let her out of her yard at night to keep the deer away. I’m afraid she’d get hit though :( .