I live in a large city, and based on the number of dogs locked away in apartments all day barking and bored to death with almost no stimulation, I figure dogs are certainly not the best friends of a lot of people. Instead, they are more like prisoners that illustrate the cruelness of humanity in general: these people use them as entertainment and care fairly little for their overall welfare.
I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere, my dog used to have an enormous backyard to run in, and was cheeky enough to have made a hole in the fence when that time of the year came and he really wanted to leave for a couple days at a time, either to sire some puppies, or to roll around in horse dung. We used a leash whenever we took him amidst civilization, otherwise he was used to just walking unleashed, with us (mostly getting impatient at how slow humans are), sniffing anything he wanted and peeing on every pole that stood in his path.
I miss him every day (died at 15 years old a happy and free half golden retriever mutt). I'd love another dog, but I know they're a type of animal that enjoys a large territory, freedom, as well as a social hierarchy. I will have to suffer with this hole inside of me until I am able to leave the city and offer a dog not only love, but large enough space to run around and not get bored to death.
Cats on the other hand, as long as they have food and are left alone, can happily live holed up in a flat. Thrive, I'm not sure, but they have much simpler needs than dogs.
are much more like humans - cat's dig urbanism, can hang out at a cafe for hours, sit on a couch watching the tube all day, they happily adapt.. So that' why we say "there's a cool cat" but you never hear anything about "cool dogs". So your theory is correct in my opinion: dogs are good rural friends and cats are good urban friends. There is also the matter of dog poop. Has anyone every complained on cat poop on their stoop? Or getting bitten by the neighbor's cat? Or being annoyed at the neighbor's mewing cat?
Now a cat on a farm, don't know about that. Wonder how that would work.
We domesticated cats so they would keep rats away from our winter grain storage.
Can easily feed themselves from all the rodents enjoying the grain supply.
Live in a suburban house with a small back yard and a small dog doesn't like it and wants to roam.
Dogs are great in rural areas, in cities I think they suffer for the sake of humans.
But a lot of dogs are rescues, and a lot of breeds are quite happy in apartments.
There are also a lot of mitigations possible. There are dog walkers and dog sitters who come by and walk the dogs during the daytime. You can have multiple dogs that keep each other company. Etc.
based on the number of dogs locked away in apartments
all day barking and bored to death with almost no
stimulation
A barking dog isn't necessarily distressed. In fact, they're probably not distressed: there are a lot of other ways that dogs show that.
They also like to sleep during the daytime. They sleep a lot in general. They are pretty adaptable to our schedules.
While I generally don't think we should be breeding dogs at all, the reality is that there are a lot of dogs who need homes (as well as homes who need dogs!) and in the majority of situations I think that getting dogs into homes with a loving family is preferable to euthanizing them.
What do you mean by this? If we don't breed dogs, in about 15 years or so, there will be no dogs left at all.
To be clearer, my wish is that we could curtail breeding until supply matched demand. Rather than the current situation where lots of dogs are put down because there are more dogs than homes.
To put it another way, would they be better off being strays? I doubt it.
And it might be affection they give their dogs but it's not really love if they are so cruel. Besides, they wouldn't be strays if they were never bought, at least not a lot of them if the demand were lower, then so would the breeding and supply.
These arguments fall apart when the animal is anthropomorphized.
Dogs sleep a lot more than people do, needing around 12 hours. They will take about 4 hours of that sleep in the day regardless if a human is around.
It's very breed dependent but, the majority of dogs don't require a significant amount of mental stimulation. For most breeds, a half hour of mental stimulation is plenty.
Obviously locking a husky or a cattle dog in an apartment (and this unfortunately does happen), is another story. There are certain breeds you shouldn't go for if you live in an apartment. But there are a lot of breeds that do just fine, even some large ones, like greyhounds.
Speaking of greyhounds, we fostered an Italian Greyhound one time...and I thought Frenchies were fragile.
Now that we both work from home we can see that the dog mostly sleeps all day, occasionally getting up to bark at some squirrels or passers-by.
Adopting a dog will probably do it good, but a lot of people are buying dogs from dog breeders (and then the mentioned behavior happens, dogs left alone to bark in apartments). Should dogs be purposefully bred as pets, only to be left alone for hours on end?
Anyone who thinks an animal enjoys being locked indoors all day with no understanding of why, or for how long it will be, is a much lesser person than me.
Being unfit to raise a dog does not imply cruelty.