Hello, throwaway account for obvious reasons, Tl;dr at bottom of post.
I have been living with the same roommate(RM) in several different apartments for about 4 years now and they've had a cool dog(CD) the entire time. Let me start with this dog is the best and literally never does anything wrong, CD has never destroyed anything or gone to the bathroom in living spaces (once or twice in RMs bed). CD is an emotional support dog, so I guess the dog has been trained for that kind of thing, RM has heavy anxiety and other similar afflictions, making an intervention difficult.
In our first apartment my roommates job allowed them to take CD to work pretty much every day, so the dog was fine then, but after we moved the first time RM had to get a new job for being laid off and this is when I began noticing some habits of RMs that I wasn't sure we're in the best interest of CD.
The first thing I notice CD is let out to use the bathroom only 3 or 4 times a day, and literally just let outside then brought back inside, no walk or play or anything. CD will wait by the stairs heading outside for an hour or more and I'll mention "I think CD needs to go out" to RM will then ask the dog if they want to go out, then respond "I think they just want to sit by the stairs and not go out" an hour or 2 later after RM takes CD out RM will say "wow, CD really peed like a racehorse today!". I frequently will tell RM "don't ask the dog, they can't speak, just take CD outside" but that logic doesn't seem to make sense to RM.
Some of these you can chalk up to forgetfulness, but after some time I noticed a pattern when RM would be out with friends or family for an entire day and not let CD out at all, not feed CD and not ask anyone to look after CD either. It's not my responsibility to take care of this dog, and I know I sound like a jerk, but I'm not always paying attention to the dog and I assume the person that actually owns the dog is paying attention. I try my best, and if the dog whines and I'm not at work, then of course I'll do my best to help CD out, but if I get home from work and there's no communication that the dog needs to be let out and fed, I assume his owner took care of it, as I would for my own dog(that I don't have mostly because I don't want to burden my roommates worn taking care of it for me....). RM has gone away for a weekend before, told me that they were going away and left CD with me without so much as asking "is it okay for you to watch CD?" Of course it is fine, but what if it wasn't? What if I worked the whole weekend and RM didn't know?
Don't get me wrong, there were times when RM would text me and ask me to take CD out and feed the dog as well, but they became more infrequent with time. I noticed when RM was on vacation for a short time that CD would initially pee an entire pond into a big puddle as soon as CD is let outside. After a few days of letting CD out very periodically CD began to ease off the large amounts of pee in one spot. Our apartment had a small dog complex and we lived very close to several ball parks, that when weren't in use, plenty of people took their dogs into them. I took CD there every day RM was out of town, even days I was working and busy I took 20 min to toss a ball for the pup on top of letting him out every few hours I could. During our time at that apartment I know RM very infrequently went over to the park with CD by themselves, more as a novelty, one of RMs friends would be over "oh want to take CD to the park and throw the ball around?" They would last 20 minutes before RMs friends would get bored and want to come back.
We moved again late into 2018 and have 2 more roommates with us in the new place, we are not located on the first floor, several flights of stairs or an elevator are required to get to our new apartment, we're the farthest room from the main entrance of the building. RM worked from home for a while after we moved in and I had a talk with RM basically saying "we're no longer right next to a patch of grass, so you may have to be really attentive to making sure CD goes out enough times per day and gets enough exercise." And RM agreed. But I noticed the bad habits creep back up in no time.
So the two other roommates and I decided to try to talk to RM one afternoon not too long ago, and as if there were some kind of cosmic being attempting to prevent this poor puppy from having any fun whatsoever RM came home from the dog park with CD having broken one of his toes. This was in november, CD needed time to heal up before playing or going on long walks, now the limited amount of time spent on walks would benefit healing instead. Well it's been months and according to RM the vet said CD has healed wonderfully and can start going on longer walks again. I was excited that maybe RM would take this time to wise up. I suggested times and distances for CDs recovery walks, but they were ignored. CD gets a maximum of 10 minutes per walk.
More recently RMs routine would be to wake up, bathroom and shower, feed CD in the morning around 10 or 11am(sometimes much later), then take CD out to the bathroom. RM would do their work or watch TV until about 5 pm to let CD out again then at 7pm RM would feed CD then about 9pm take CD out for one last pee and head to bed immediately afterwards.
And finally RM got a job that requires office time again recently, so now the routine looks like RM wakes up, showers and bathroom, feeds the dog and takes CD out at around 830 am. Gets home around 5, feeds CD at 7pm and takes CD out again at 9 pm. This is exactly what happened yesterday. RM took CD out today at about 830 am and left for work at about 9am.
I have had many conversations with RM about this before I've even casually brought up with RM " do you think CD is getting enough play time?" " is CD getting out enough?" It's kind of falling on deaf ears at this point, because RM thinks they're doing the best job in the world as a dog parent, but I've tried correcting them many times or pointing out that they're not as good as they think, but the poor habits almost immediately come back and at the end of the day the only one suffering is CD. I know the best course of action is to help all I can to make the dog more comfortable, but I'm not capable of watching this poor puppy all the time, and what if we're no longer roommates in the future, would I condemn this poor doggie to this type of life forever??
Tl;dr my roommate only let's their emotional support dog outside to pee 2x or 3x per day and I don't think that's enough, I've tried reasoning and normal conversations haven't worked, I'm scared of an "intervention" because of my roommates anxiety, what do?
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/aelk0o/i_need_advice_for_my_roommates_dog/
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