Just this past winter, a concerned neighbor in Mt. Healthy, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati) started a petition asking the city and county to implement laws banning dog tethering in extreme weather conditions. Rebecca Stiver started the petition after seeing videos on Facebook from local friends showing dogs left out in the cold for hours.
“Somebody has to stand up and do something,” Stiver said. “They’re voiceless, so when it comes to animals, we have to stand up and we have to be their voice.”
There also is a common misconception about different types of dogs and cold whether. Based on shear body mass, larger dogs can tolerate the cold a bit longer than smaller dogs. The same goes with dogs that have thick coats of fur, like Akitas or Huskies. But these attributes don’t make them impervious to the cold. ALL dogs are susceptible to hypothermia if they are outdoors too long.