Why do some people leave their animals chained in the middle of nowhere?

I live in a rural area of Texas and unfortunately am a bit familiar with this mindset. What I've observed is there are three kinds of dog owners:

The first consider the dog to be family. They're kept inside, go on trips with family, and maybe get regular back yard time. This is probably most familiar to Reddit.

The second consider the dogs to be a guard. They're kept outside 24/7 for the purpose of defending the house from real and imagined threats. This explains a lot of the dogs you see in ghettos, small towns, and lower middle class suburbs that are on chains or in the back yard all the time. The owners are never outside or are working multiple jobs so these dogs tend to get aggressive over time.

The third consider the dog to be property. This is pretty common for people who have grown up in good families in rural areas and on farms. I'd say there's some overlap with the guard type animals. Here the owners aren't necessarily negligent or assholes, but working around livestock you see a lot of health problems and suffering and it does make you kind of tough and detached. The dogs are given rudimentary food and shelter and in return they have enough of a presence to keep coyotes, stray dogs, vermin, etc away from the property.

The next type consider the dog to be a plaything, for lack of a better word. This would be the majority of shitty dog owners, including those that chain them out in the back yard. The owners are usually adults that are still 8 years old in their head. I would say it comes from growing up without having learned empathy, probably from shitty parents. The dog is strictly there for entertainment or boredom, and most of the time it's out in the back yard because the owner doesn't have the interest in housebreaking them or training them.

The last mindset -- rescue, that's pretty common in the country, where people do have empathy and try to save every stray that has to be rescued, but to stay sane you can't have all these dogs running loose in your house. So you end up with dogs spending all their time on a chain or locked in a pen. For the most part they do get fed and get some basic medical care.

That probably explains the majority of it. A lot of people do get into alcohol and drug abuse and after that point neglect or abandon their animals, but that's how it gets started (probably the "plaything" or "guard" category for a lot of those people).

/r/TrueAskReddit Thread