I just came back from taking my three young children to the park. It was marred by this dog running all over the playground.
We have a leash law, so why don’t people obey it? Becaue they think THEIR sweet little Fido is so friendly that the law doessn’t apply.
Let’s just assume Fido is the friendliest dog in the world:
But I (as a parent to little kids) don’t know your Fido and can’t assume he is friendly. So I have to watch the dog’s behavior carefully and figure out what kind of a beast he is.
Maybe my child is afraid of dogs. Lots of toddlers are petrified of dogs (even a meidum sized one is at eye level with a kid, pretty scarey). Today I saw sevel children stop playing and run to their moms when they saw this dog running wild through the playground.
Even a friendly dog can hurt a child accidentally. Yound children are small and unsteady. A dog can easily knock them down, step on their feet, or twack them in the face with a wagging tail.
ALL dogs has the potential to bite. Children aren’t always gentle, and a curious toddler might pull or step on Fido’s tail, causing him to lash out.
So keep your dog on a leash! Or at least don’t bring them to a payground full of little kids!
A real leash, dammit, not one of those spring-loaded “I’m-meeting-the-legal-requirements-of-the-leash-law-but-don’t-really-have-any-control-over-my-dog” things.
Having watched a “leashed” dog run up on my porch and kill our cat while his owner stood helplessly 25 feet away, I have a bit of a problem with those. Maybe alright for a daschund, but if you’ve got a real dog, keep it leashed while you’re in public. Assholes.
I was prepping my bike in a parking lot the other day, getting ready for a ride. All of a sudden I saw something large coming toward me out of the corner of my eye. I looked up just in time to see a pit bull running right at me. I stood up, startled, and the dog stopped about two feet from me and pranced around a bit. Luckily he didn’t attack and he ran off a few seconds later. I watched the pit bull and another dog tear around the parking lot, trying to figure out who the owner was. Finally I saw the guy walking around with a leash in his hand, completely oblivious to the danger he was putting everyone in, not to mention the danger to his dogs. I think I would have been perfectly justified taking whatever physical action I thought necessary if that dog did not run away when he did. I could easily have been carrying a bat (I DID have a knife), and killed or injured the idiot’s dog. And yes, there was a leash law in effect. I always think of people like this the same way as people who let their kids run wild in restaurants, use cell phones in the movies, toss cigarette butts out of their car windows, carry on oversized luggage: very simple, on/off thought processes. The only solution is law/policy enforcement, but society simply doesn’t have the resources to bother.
Aside from the possibility of the dog hurting or frightening someone else, a leash (a real leash attached to a collar the dog can’t pull out of) can save your dog’s life. An excited dog hard on the trail of a squirrel or whatever can run into the street and be killed in an instant. Lord knows I’ve pulled my own up hard and sharp to protect her before. That’s also why I taught her to stop at corners and wait quietly till I tell her it’s time to cross the street.
I totally agree with you. Some people are so ignorant it makes me want to #)*#())#$.
ouisey,
I like that idea. I should try it sometime. Heeee heee!
I especially LOVE when I’m on a jog or walk and a nice, barking, Golden Retriever dog from hell (and I love animals) comes running at me and scares the living shit out of me.
Um, yea. I really love THAT. Morons. Keep your fucking pets contained!!! I mean the owners were NO WHERE in sight!!!
LarryMudd…I’m so sorry about your cat. That is just awful.
Zwald- Sorry about that incident…I agree with you.
I am a dog owner and I agree. My dog Bandit is old - really old - and can’t defend himself anymore. I often walk him (on a leash) in the dark (winter - sigh) and so many times we run into unleashed dogs. I have started taking an umbrella with on our walks in case he is attacked. It is not safe for me (because I have Bandit with me) to try and capture these dogs and call animal control, but it sure pisses me off.
And put the lease on the dog before you open the door and leave the house. If the owner of the German-Shepard-who-weight-more-than-me had done that, the stupid dog wouldn’t have stood up, put his front paws on my shoulders, and ended up barking in soprano.
The most bizarre conversation I ever overheard was a guy talking about suing the person who “shot my champion pitbull and blinded him in one eye cause he was just attacked a 10 year old kid.”
I tend to keep my dog away from kids whether she is leashed or not, because it is all too common to some rugrat to come up and start mauling my dog,without asking permission or showing any awareness of how dogs tick. And no matter how stupid the human, the dog is always at fault if it bites.
And my favorite is when I’m walking my dog off leash (always within eyesight and voice control, and always cleaning up after her). And someone on the other side of the street will have some yappy little ratdog straining at the end of the leash, yipping at my dog. And although my dog is ignoring the worthless little creature, the owner of the little nuisance feels it necessary to exercise his civic duty and remind me that my dog should be on a leash.
(Note, when walking my dog off leash, I cross to the other side of the street to avoid pedestrians, or otherwise make sure I distance myself from other people.)
Thanks, buddy. And your dog should be on the end of a stick to clean under furniture.
Boscibo, that’s my other big beef with people who let their dogs run unrestrained. There was a dog near my old apartment who routinely came tearing out of his yard snapping and growling at Dolly. She has a little scar on her nose from one of these run-ins, where she tried to protect me and got snapped before I could land a good kick. Shortly afterward they took to keeping the dog tied up.
Even if your dog is good-natured, keep it on a leash for its own protection. My dogs don’t like other dogs, but it’s within my rights to walk them, leashed, in my neighborhood. If your cute little puppy, who you’re running around the block with unleashed, comes up to them, they’re gonna tear him apart. And it’ll be your own goddamn fault.
Leash your dogs, pick up your dogshit, and we’ll all have a happy neighborhood.
Boscibo that is a my beef with unleashed dogs running upto my old dog. I dont want him to get hurt in the process. I basically want no contact with other dogs so I cross the street when I see other dogs and feel helpless when I see a larger dog without a leash running towards my dog all I can think is how much damage it will do to my dogs legs and hip.
I leash my dog where it’s required that I do so, and I unleash him where it’s allowed that I do so. We’ve got an off-leash dog park here in Missoula, and dogs of all descriptions are running around off-leash there all the time.
However.
There are rules for the use of this dog park. One rule is “No aggressive dogs allowed”. A German Shepherd (outweighing my Chow/Golden Retriever cross by at least 25 pounds) crossed a 50-foot expanse of open ground for the sole purpose of pinning my dog to the ground by the neck today. If it happens again, I’m reporting the owners to Animal Control. I don’t like doing this, but there are rules for using the dog park. Either don’t bring the aggressive dog, or keep it on leash.
MrVisible - my dog wants nothing to do with your dog either, and would not come up to them. Generalizations are handy things - but not always 100% accurate.
I’m having a hard time imagining the merits of a dog that would “tear apart” a nonthreatening dog?
Funny, when I saw the topic the only thing that went through my mind was the dog’s safety. Probably because of what I saw the other day:
A guy was walking his two miniature dachshunds at night down a crowded side street toward an even more crowded main street (highway through the center of the city, actually), when I noticed that they had no leashes, no chains, nothing. Just walking loose. Now, most people with these dogs carry them when they go outside because there’s such a danger of them being stepped on or run over by a bicycle. Shit, it’s hard enough for people to see those furballs around their feet during the daytime and this fuckwit is letting them run around loose at night?
A real leash, dammit, not one of those spring-loaded “I’m-meeting-the-legal-requirements-of-the-leash-law-but-don’t-really-have-any-control-over-my-dog” things
Actually, if they are used properly (read: attentively) those springloaded leashes are a great comprimise. The one I use is only about 10’ and I can certainly stop my dog in his tracks if he’s heading the wrong way and with a little pratice you can draw it in quite quickly. If the leash were 25’ and the owner not paying attention then I would agree it’s pretty useless.
Funny… that’s what everyone else whose dogs have gotten in fights with mine say. If you follow the law, and leash your dog, neither of our dogs is at risk. Sounds like a reasonable request to me.
Too bad. I’m not going to tell you about how wonderful my dogs are, despite the fact that they are. I’m just going to reiterate that, for your dog’s safety, for my dog’s safety, for the safety of everybody you’re around, keep your dog on a leash. Follow the law. Pick up your dog’s crap. And tip your waitresses.
Keep a cell phone with you, with the number to Animal Control stored. Call them when you see an animal without a leash. At the very least, maybe you can get the owner cited.
Does anyone live in an area that has a decent Animal Control Department? Our county has maybe 4 trucks to cover a LOT of area. When the builders were trying to clear the lot next door to ours, there was a large, apparently sick, dog that crawled into a large cardboard box and did not move. Naturally, we were all reluctant to approach it. When we called Animal Control, they said “It’s Saturday - we don’t pick up.” Oddly enough, when someone called the sheriff and a deputy saw the dog, Animal Control was dispatched within an hour.
Our tax dollars at work.
Same county, with a leash law, where I was often confronted by loose dogs as I walked mine. Luckily for me, I mustered a loud, mean sounding “NO” and the loose critters didn’t attack me or mine. But it took all the joy out of an afternoon stroll with my doggies.