The answer is Never.
If you want to know why, ask the neighbours who have to listen to a howling, barking, lonely, upset dog. Listen to the dog crying for months yourself, and if you can't hear what it is saying, you should not have a dog. It is begging to be allowed to be inside with you, the only family it has now that you have taken it away from its mother and littermates (if you have bought a puppy). You are the dog's family and every dog knows that no other member of its family is put out into the yard. It craves the physical and emotional comfort of the home. It craves the safety of the home from

If you need more proof, take a look at the outside of your back door to see the gouges in it from a unhappy dog that is desperately trying to dig its way back into the home and family it is barred from.

No dog will choose a yard over a home or a "nice" dog house over a home. A dog can be brainwashed into accepting hours in a yard, even a life in a yard, but it is not the free choice of the most social creature on earth.

Unless sick, no dog wants to be alone for long. And no dog prefers a yard to a home. AAS has not once in over ten years of dog rescue, had a dog that did not want to be in the house. We have even had wolf hybrids that have spent all their lives outside, and within a few days, they are in the house, sleeping on a soft couch, and digging in their feet if we try to get them outside just to relieve themselves, in fear that the door will be closed on them.

Yard dogs bark and howl and cry, which makes enemies of your neighbours, some of whom may decide to poison your dog. Yard dogs escape out of boredom, get hit by cars, poop on the neighbours' property, chase cats, and frighten old people and children.

Yard dogs dig and chew in boredom and out of anxiety. Loud noises frighten them. Passersby can frighten them and make them react with aggression. The very best way to ruin a nice dog, and turn it into a public danger, is to isolate it and subject it to stimuli that it can't do anything about.

It is the common experience of real dog lovers that even when you are outside, gardening for example, the dog will join you - for awhile - and then go back into the house and the couch.

If you think that it is okay to put the dog in the yard when you are at work, then you are a nuisance to the neighbourhood, and totally insensitive dogs.

The answer to our question, "When is it okay to leave a dog in a yard?" is Never.

Rocky was a Surrey yard dog. It took him 36 hours to decide that even a crowded couch was a lot better than the yard...