re: Thinking about giving dog away - am I the worst kind of person - UPDATE

We have dogs, and they were the first kids in our house... until we had real kids, and then they were relegated to the back yard and garage (heated & cooled garage, BTW).

I felt bad about doing it, but our lab is pretty high energy and we didn't want him around the baby for fear that he'd step on them, sit on them, etc. We didn't end up giving ours away, but in hindsight, we should have probably considered it. They aren't locked up all day long- they have a large garage when they aren't outside, and when they are outside, they have the whole side of the house to themselves to run around, dig a little, sit in the shade, etc. They don't get much attention from us, but they aren't in a cage all day long, either.