Thoughts on "condo collies" and other "apartment-inappropriate" pets

For a couple of years, I had two border collies, one of which was bred to be a cow dog. My partner and I both worked full time jobs and usually weren't able to come home at lunch, and for a while we lived in a two bedroom, second story apartment. Sounds like the worst situation for border collies, right?

Here's all it took to keep my condo collies satisfied: twenty minutes of fetch in the yard/field in the morning before work. Filled kongs for while we were gone. They had run of the house and, after we moved, a doggy door to the fenced yard for the nine hours they were alone. More fetch or an off leash walk in the evening when we came home. A few minutes of trick-training for their dinner, then hanging out with the family as we went about our evening housework, dinner prep, and relaxing.

They both slept quietly in their crates next to the bed every night, and rarely made a peep until we got up the next morning. They didn't destroy anything, they didn't bark or develop obsessive habits. Every indication was that they were content and happy to be part of our lives.

When I got pregnant, the routine started slipping. For three months I was nauseous from noon until bedtime, and the only relief seemed to be to sit or lie down, so the evening walk was the first to go.

Soon, the only evening exercise they were getting was a few minutes of fetch in the yard. By the second trimester, I was more tired in the mornings and was sleeping through my alarm more often, so soon they weren't getting morning exercise every day either. I started getting lazy about filling their kongs every day. I started feeling exhausted in the evenings after work. All I wanted was to lay on the couch until bedtime.

By the middle of the second trimester, the poor dogs were rarely getting any exercise during the week at all, and only one good long off-leash walk on the weekends. It's no coincidence that they both started counter surfing during this period. Some dishes were broken. We learned to puppy-proof in the mornings, so it still wasn't a huge issue.

We made it through pregnancy and the newborn stage with both dogs still happy in their living situation. A couple years later, we thought that it still wasn't fair to the farm-bred one to be cooped up so much, so we re-homed her to a sheep farm. Ironically, she turned out to be bad at herding, as well, so she continues as a house pet to this day.

I'm not saying that a working-bred dog is for everyone. But so often we find ourselves judging pet owners for the type of animal they've chosen. I certainly have in the past, but, especially in the year 2020, we could all learn to let go of that knee-jerk reaction to assume the worst about strangers we know nothing about.