Is it ok to leave my dogs outside?

Question

I live in Las Vegas and we are about to have a cold freeze.

I have a German Shepard . She is one year old. She is medium sized. Her coat is shortish and a little thick.
I also have a Border Collie. She is small. She has a short thickish coat. 
They both sleep on chairs. The G.S sleeps on a big fluffy chair.(is curled up) and the B.C sleeps on a wheeled chair that is soft with blankets (is curled up)

They won't freeze to death, right?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

• "Is it ok to leave my dogs outside?"

Not one word of your next 10 sentences has any relevance to us answering that question. My dogs are not allowed on furniture, but that your pooches were occupying chairs when you typed that makes it most unlikely that they were "outside" at that moment. If the chairs ARE outside, they offer no protection from rain, ice, hail.
There is not one word about WHERE they must sleep when "outside". Is it roofed? - insulated? - on the ground? - on concrete? - padded?

And it is impossible for you to have a "German Shepard" - no such thing exists. There is no "arding" task for any dog to perform, so no such breed was developed. My breed's real name translates as German Shepherd Dog, because the breed was developed to HERD sheep.
3 words, so the abbreviation is GSD.

• "I live in Las Vegas and we are about to have a cold freeze."

Weather forecasts normally state the expected minimum temperature. But you haven't.
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GSD_Haven/info?yguid=70025627 should show a team of GSDs hauling a sled at speed - but my software cannot see any photos in YahooGroups since /neo/ was imposed on us despite over 40,000 votes to return to /classic/ YahooGroups.
My GSDs have been quite comfortable during frosts, and even when snow lay on the ground for 3 days in 2012 - the only time it has done so during the 37 years I've lived here. (I consider that snow ought to be up on a mountain downwind from me.)

But each of my dogs has a raised sleeping box (to insulate the floor from the ground temperature) with a top-hinged door (to minimise draughts), and can choose to stand or lie or exercise in its run, or to go into its sleeping box.

• "They won't freeze to death, right?"

They might - YOU haven't given us any evidence to base a risk-evaluation on. It depends on actual temperature, dryness or dampness, insulation, whether they have enough body-fat to convert into energy, and probably some other factors that I'm too tired to think of.

You need to READ the Community Guidelines. One of them states that we are NOT allowed to waste bytes by asking the same question repeatedly. But you have asked
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20131208224437AArEQV0
as well as this one.

Add
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/The_GSD/Source/
to your browser, so that you can easily look up all sorts of information about dogs, especially GSDs.

To discuss GSDs, join some groups such as
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GSD_Friendly/
The people in them KNOW about GSDs. Plus you can include actual photos in your posts, unlike the clunky mechanism that stingy Y!A provides.
 
King Les - first pup in 1950; GSD breeder & trainer as of 1968

michele · Answer

The rule of thumb is that if it is too cold for you, it is too cold for your dog! There is a big PSA going around right now through the ASPCA regarding this.

Short hair dogs, even if they are double coated, get cold easily and will suffer in the freezing weather.

If you must leave them outside, you must also provide them proper shelter beyond comfy chairs. They need a large dog house or a protected 4-sided sturdy shelter with a small opening for entering and exiting. The opening should face away from the wind. The outside of the shelter should be covered in tarp and insulated. The inside of the shelter should at the very least have a hay floor for insulation. A pile of old blankets is even better.

Trending News

Is it ok to leave my dogs outside?

2 Answers