Dogs (and cats)….
I have found ownership by frum people to be more of a city vs. country thing.
I have never not had dogs, neither has Mrs. CTL. Both Born in CT and lived in single family homes with land.
We both have siblings married to people who came from city apartment buildings who never owned dogs, one had a cat.
Currently we have 4 dogs and 2 cats. One dog died of old age last week, We have an area of our grounds under a large apple tree that is our pet cemetery. The dog was buried there (along side about a dozen other dogs and cats). A flagstone was placed over the grave and sometime next spring I’ll scratch his name and date of death into the stone. This was our second teen aged dog to pass in 6 months. Our grandchildren (along with us) miss them very much. They were very important for the children to have while all here since March due to Ciovid,
Here, walking a dog on Shabbos is not an issue, we open the sliders to one side of our yard and the dogs have a half acre of fence land to run, play and do their business. No walking around with bags and pooper scoopers, just natural fertilizer for their grass play area.
Our shul Rav has two dogs. I don’t know many non-elderly shul members in town without dogs.
That said, If I lived in a high rise apartment building and had to take dogs out for a walk multiple times a day, I doubt I’d own dogs.
Cats, OTOH are lo maintenance. ours are inside cats, never go outside, but do control the field mice problem in the house. With a home more than 200 years old and a stone foundation we do get mice when the weather turns cold, so we have a downstairs cat and an upstairs cat for pest control