There is so much more to this story.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

All other issues aside, I think she is a well-meaning girl. But she has this DOG. The dog is a good dog but totally untrained; she took him to obedience school briefly but she didn't agree with the methods (typical dominance/reward training, very effective with dogs as it fits with their natural pack behavior) so she quit. He has extreme separation anxiety issues, and will bark all day if left alone.

This girl is a postgrad student and is not home very much. The dog DID have range of the back yard, but he really needs to be walked, and preferably taken somewhere to run, twice a day. I don't have time to do it and am not interested in taking over her responsibilities if I did. Her dog is a hunting breed, large and rangy, and dumb as a sack of hair trimmings, but I think he would be trainable if she would put in the effort. He's a barker, very noisy and difficult to control. I am home all day, so for the last two years I have been the person who has put most of the effort into letting him in and out of the back yard and trying to curb his barking.

Now we get to the good part. Because he's not getting enough exercise or attention, he started slipping out of the house and running away, and he does not come when called. He never does it when I open the door, and rarely when the kids do, because we're all pretty good at blocking him, but if ANYONE else comes over he takes advantage of their unwariness to push past them. He has absolutely no wariness of roads or cars and we live near a busy street. It got to the point where, if someone knocked on the door, I would put him in the basement before opening it.

He has also killed several of my trees and shrubs by urinating on them, including a 7-year-old paw-paw that SHOULD have fruited this year. This dog is a huge PITA, and a lot of it could be resolved simply with attention and training... but my housemate wants to spend time with her boyfriend instead of coming home and taking care of her dog.

So, then he figured out he can tear apart the side fence and get out. He did it twice, and the second time, what I had feared finally happened: he got hit by a car. Luckily, only his paw was hurt, but here's where it gets really weird; she handled this by locking him in her room ALL DAY while she's gone. It's ridiculous. A sixty-pound dog should not be locked in a 10x12 room for ten hours at a time. She comes home, takes him for a walk, and then puts him back in her room and goes off to do her own thing. I can understand doing this while his paw is healing, to make sure he rests and doesn't re-injure it, but then

And, OK, I realize I should probably step back instead of letting myself get upset with this, BUT

She is moving out at the end of the month (I am so grateful she decided this on her own, as I was dreading asking her to move) and is talking about how hard it is to find apartments with a big dog, and is trying to get him declared a service animal for her anxiety, so she can more easily find a place. I said "I hate to say it, but to be gently frank, I am not sure an apartment is going to be a good fit with your dog, because of his barking"

And she says, holy shit I could not believe it but she says, "My plan is to (a) move in where they already have dogs that bark and (b) use the spray bark collar and if he can't stop, then I can keep him in my boyfriend's adjacent basement."

The fucking basement. All day. Alone. In a basement. That is so absolutely not OK I can't stand it. I told her that locked in a basement is no life for a dog. She takes him nowhere. Not to the beach or hiking or anything. Ever. She goes to Sauvie's Island all the time with her boyfriend and never takes the dog. He just needs to get out and run, and be trained, and his behavior issues would be resolved. He just needs time and attention. I can't give it to him; I have three kids and two dogs of my own, neither of which have her dog's particular needs. I have neither time nor energy for this dog, which is why I don't have a large hunting breed.

The insanity of a full-time grad student getting a large hunting breed boggles my mind; it's like she has no regard at all for anything other than her own immediate desires. I am upset and frustrated and at the end of my rope; the girl won't even read dog-training books because she "disagrees" with them, meaning essentially that she is willfully ignorant of anything that might contradict what she WANTS to do.

Sigh. I am trying to just ride out the month. After that, what she does is her own problem and at least I don't have to witness it.

I find myself sincerely hoping she's infertile.

[Juana]

What a horrible way to treat an animal! 

[Adios]

Give the dog to someone with acreage and tell her the dog ran away. She doesn't deserve to be responsible for an animal.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am, actually, looking for someone to take him, and if I do I am going to tell her that exact thing.

She has a really fucked up sense of what's "nice" and what's "mean" to dogs. She thinks that baby-talking and constantly fussing over him while she's here is "nice", and that training and discipline are "mean". That's her reasoning behind not taking him to obedience school; the first thing they teach dog owners is how to dominate their dog, and she thinks that's "mean" so she won't do it. She "disagrees" with the idea that dogs have a psychological need for a firm hierarchy and a leader. The result is that her dog is nervous and neurotic around her.

In other words, she doesn't know jack shit about dogs, made up some nonsense in her head, and pretends that she's right in order to avoid having to do anything hard, inconvenient, or expensive.

[Rumckle]

Right, so rather than doing something "mean" to her dog, she is going to put a spray collar on it, and confine it to a basement?

Grrr, educated stupid people piss me off so much at times.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

Grrr, educated stupid people piss me off so much at times.

^this^

I sincerely hope she actually moves out at the end of the month.  Sounds scarily like a helpless-manipulative type -  "It's so hard to find an apartment..." and you're past the first week of May.  Only saying because I once had a roommate who was going to leave at the end of the month for over half a year, finally had to call movers to take his shit to his boyfriend's place, and I hope things work out better for you.  And of course, for the mutt.

... she handled this by locking him in her room ALL DAY while she's gone.

- don't want to know what a 'spray collar' is.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Right, so rather than doing something "mean" to her dog, she is going to put a spray collar on it, and confine it to a basement?

Grrr, educated stupid people piss me off so much at times.

Yep. You nailed it.

NR, I so so so know exactly what you're saying. It's a huge concern for me, especially since I have someone lined up for the room already, who is going to clean the basement and take care of some minor improvements to the space in exchange for getting the first month free. If she doesn't move out as promised, it will fuck up his timeline, so I am going to have to be firm.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

One of our other friends also chimed in with useful advice about trying to find a foster home for him if she doesn't have the resources to take proper care of him, and this evening she had this to say:

hey, I just realized it sounds like I meant I would keep my dog in a basement at all times rather than simply during the time that I am at work. That would be particularly awful.

I would actually have time to pick him up from my parents house every day, oddly. The problem is that I can't drive. But this is in the process of changing.

Also just for right now can we stop talking about it? Just cause it's stressing me out in the extreme. I do thank everyone for the helpful and constructive advice.   

I told her I assumed she meant only while she's at work, and that I am sorry this is stressful for her but that doesn't make it OK to say nothing about it.

I don't know why she thinks it would be just FINE to "only" lock him in the basement during the day while she's at work. And, oh, this is stressing her out. Like her refusal to take him to obedience training has resulted in an out-of-control dog that she leaves here with me ALL FUCKING DAY and that isn't stressful. Like her refusal to train him and exercise him didn't lead directly to him getting hit by a car. Grrrr.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I might not be so upset about it if there was any indication that anything else would be different, like she will start exercising him and take him to classes. People crate or otherwise confine their dogs during the day all the time; the dogs just sleep. But I suspect that she will take whatever route is immediately easiest, and justify it to herself using whatever convolutions are necessary.

[Reginald Ret]

Gah, i had a housemate like that.
We had to take two steep stairs to get to our appartment, so she decided she wants a dog.
She didn't train it in any way so it pissed everywhere all the time.
within half a year she managed to get knocked up by a boy that hadn't even told his parents he had a gf (she was the wrong color for his family to accept her)
So ofcourse she decides to keep the babby.
fast forward a year: she broke up with her bf, is living with her parents and dropped out of uni.

the last i heard she found her own place and left the dog with her parents. The former bf sometimes visits his kid.
At least she looked happy the last time i saw her.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Christ.

Please at least tell me she was only 20 or something

Mine's 30. Thirty fucking years old, working on her PhD, and still living in some juvenile fantasy land in which everything's going to be OK the easy way because she wants it to.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Update: she asked me if I am planning to get another housemate right away, so she could know whether to get a storage unit, and I told her I have one lined up. Apparently she thought that if I wasn't getting a housemate it would have been just fine for her to leave all her crap in my basement.

AVERTED.

GOD BLESS YOU, NEW HOUSEMATE. WHO IS TOTALLY NOT CONCRETE AND HAS NEVER SEEN THE SPACE!

[Reginald Ret]

she was about 25 i think.
I hope your next housemate will be the best possible.

[Elder Iptuous]

i believe there is nothing you can do.
you're going to have to put her to sleep, unfortunately...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

i believe there is nothing you can do.
you're going to have to put her to sleep, unfortunately...

Maybe I should lock her in the basement... but only while I'm working.

My next housemate, assuming the guy decides he wants the space, is pretty awesome and just got out of a house-share where he was the mature, responsible one. He's kind of a neat-freak so if anything it will be him having to put up with my bullshit mess. However, I plan to stay out of his space, and I keep the shared areas tidy.

This guy's handy, too, so that will be really helpful if he decides to move in.