We live in a Sydney North Shore block of 38 early 70s apartments. These days there are two young couples each with two little dogs plus 5 young couples each with a little dog. That’s 9 happy little dogs. Plus an unknown number of cats, possibly 9, at least 5, most of which roam.
The dogs yap inside often but almost invariably yap outside when their owners take them for their late evening and early morning walks (sometimes at 5am!) to wee and poo, usually in the common property garden areas. Even if they diligently clean up the poo, and they don’t, it’s pretty disgusting.
I don’t get this; young, working couples with trendy, status symbol style puppies who have to stay at home, locked in all day most days while their ‘masters’ go away to work. It seems cruel and self-indulgent to me. (Far as I know, only one dog has an outing with a dog walking service, every couple of days.)
We had the old by-law, ‘no pets without permission but permission couldn’t reasonably be refused’ but a few years ago an ‘enlightened’ committee engineered a change to something similar to the newly gazetted by-law “you can have pets but they have to be registered, documented, OKd or whatever”.
I think the new situation with pets here ‘sucks’. We chose apartment living and this apartment 20 years ago with the understanding there would be no, or few sensible and approved, pets. But now we suffer.
I don’t reckon any of these 9 dogs here are for companionship or comfort. They are all inbred status symbols and it’s cruel on many levels.