yeah, that's my point... they NEEED the exercise, or they are unhappy, and then they make everyone else unhappy, and the strays, the problem with them is they don't have a human leader, so they are constantly in a competition with other dogs to be the leader and they often are also provoking constant barking as they wander past

keeping a dog as a companion only is irresponsible and delinquent towards the animal... it needs to work every day, hard, until it's tuckered out or it will grate the nerves of everyone living in earshot

fine if you are so far away from neighbours that the dog's guarding behaviour actually counts for something but 99.9999% of urban dogs are simply bored, you can even see it with the ones that are super manic, those are for sure almost without social contact at all, as well as needing exercise, so you see them bouncing around like maniacs, doing tic-like behaviours, often barking for no reason at all

every time i see it, i'm like, goddammit, this dog just wants some luvs and some work to do

people treat dogs like they are some kind of pet but that's not what they are, they are team members, to the bone, and just like humans go crazy when they are starved of meaningful labor, they also go crazy and stir up trouble, and the owners are responsible, but that doesn't change the fact that i want to put the things out of their misery, for which reason i MUST live where there is none within 100m of me or i will become traumatised

i can't begin to explain how horrible it was for me living next door to a chihuahua kept in a nasty, concrete enclosure right where his voice bounces straight through my windows, where i'm trying to work and not think about how i would like to slap those people for not taking him out for a fucking walk

the problem is quite extreme here in Madeira, because so many people keep small dogs and they don't even let them in the house, the terrain is too tough for humans to walk and they are all soft and mushy, not like the people that built this place, to actually do ANYTHING, and then there's the strays, which nobody does anything about, running around, breeding up more strays, and roaming the streets and camihos stirring up the rest of the dogs behind the fences in their nasty little boxes

they called the Canary Islands after the way the people in this archaepelago are so fond of their dogs, but i doubt that 100 years ago those dogs were not working for their food, what we have now is like some kind of mindless ritual behaviour that has lost all meaning

i'm just glad i was finally able to get far enough away from them that i barely even think about how there is any dogs around, but every time i go up to the shops, some asshole who lives next door to the church on top of the hill lets their dog run around on the roof and it yells across the whole goddamn valley whenevery people come up from the other side to visit the commercial district, like, what the actual fuck, don't they feel even slightly concerned that their animal is making such a useless racket? doggo loves it of course, he's the king of the castle, and that's the reason why he is so vocal