Replying to a message of Fred Burgess to Matt Munson:

 FB> On Dec 04, 2010 12:40am, MATT MUNSON wrote to ALL:

 MM>> Hello everybody.

 MM>> My county has dodgy administrators who run their local animal shelter
 MM>> that is county owned so horrid, where they let their dogs get
 MM>> frostbite and dehydrated. I bet they wouldnt treat their own dogs
 MM>> that way. I would like to see the manager or executive who runs the
 MM>> shelter be forced to buy some heat fans for the outdoor kennel so
 MM>> instead of having it at 30-40 degrees farenhight, it might be like
 MM>> 50 or 65 degrees farenheight with the heat fans. And maybe allow
 MM>> volunteers to donate blankets for the dogs so they could keep warm
 MM>> at least, and even if the volunteers donate detergent to wash the
 MM>> blankets at least the county would not have to worry about frostbite
 MM>> in the winter for the poor creatures. :(

 MM>> Matt

 MM>> ... "...[God] created lipstick and rollers for our
hair." -Destinty's
 MM>> inland utopia bbs (1:218/109)

 FB> I second that emotion!  Where do you live so I can make some calls to
 FB> them and yell at'em!!   My neighbor has a dog that is kept outside
 FB> 24/7 and it howls and whines all night long.  And now that it's below
 FB> freezing they don't have any heat out there for it, nor do they keep
 FB> the water filled with fresh water (it's frozen) .. I just thank GOD
 FB> that there is some snow on the ground for it to use as water.

Hmmm.  If the dog is kep outside the important thing is to keep it out of the wind.
If the dog has a shelter - even if it doesn't have a door - it should be OK.  I have 
five dogs that live outside in a fenced yard.  They have a building they can get into
through an open 'doog door;' the building is only partly insulated but it
IS windproof
(concrete block).  Their water bucket is frozen solid - but I make sure they have 
water when I feed them every evening.  My neighbor up the street has a dog he keeps
outside all year, if there's any insulation in that dog's shelter it's very
thin.  My caveat
to this is that my dogs are fairly good sized - the outside dogs range from
45 to 110 
pounds.  What will REALLY hurt the animals is staying inside all night and
then outside
all day (when the outside temp is below about +50F (guessing at that, but
+30F for sure),
their bodies won't adapt to the cold.

35 years ago I was TDY to Biloxi and took my (one) cockapoo with me, she
weighed about
20 pounds.  I kept her in my pickup camper while I lived in the barracks at
Keesler AFB.
One of my classmates told me he heard my dog howling all night (she wasn't
the only one
living in the parking lot).  I rigged up a box to hold the top of my
sleeping bag open and put
her sleeping mat inside that, and she was fine after that.  Note that about
200 yards south
of the main gate of Keesler AFB is the Gulf of Mexico - and that January it
snowed there
(just a dusting, but it shut everything down).

All of that said, leaving a dog outside with no food, water or shelter is
animal abuse IMO.
As I noted, for medium and large dogs the important thing is to provide
shelter from the
wind; small dogs (less than about 35 lbs) probably can't handle staying
outside in temps below about +40F.  In areas where it gets below freezing
over night it helps a lot if the dog's shelter
is insulated from the ground, but otherwise shelter from the wind is what's
important.  Note
that in Alaska they build shelters out of ice/packed show (i.e. igloos) and
they're perfectly comfy inside.

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