By Chad Love

Ideally, we'd all like to have acres and acres of land for our dogs to roam and play in without fear of them wandering off and getting lost, hit by a car or stolen. Unfortunately for most of us, it rarely works out that way, and owning a dog generally means conforming to the often inconvenient or difficult realities of our lives.

Such is the case with me. Although I live on a couple acres in a semi-rural environment, I cannot, for aesthetic, topographical and financial reasons, build a fence around my entire property. It's not a problem most of the time. The dogs are always with me when I'm outside. They know not to chase the neighborhood deer and they generally stick close to the house. But when I'm inside for any length of time, whichever dogs aren't on house rotation must be kenneled. I know many people do it, but I'm just not comfortable letting my dogs roam free when I'm not out with them.

By Chad Love

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the negative impact that free-roaming cats have on wildlife populations. So just to be fair, here's some food for thought: according to a recent study, free-roaming dogs aren't exactly saints, either.

From this story on livescience.com: 
"...a new study from researchers at the University of Oxford reminds that domestic dogs are also killers and disease-spreaders that can pose conservation problems when they're allowed to roam.