Leash Your Animals and Shut Your Filthy Mouth

The BBQ Pit
41

Well, mainly because everyone else, including her husband, had not problem at all doing exactly that. Because she makes no mention of growling, raised hackles, charging her, or other aggressive behavior–just barking-- I get a real feeling that it has more to do with her feelings than with any actual danger. I still think saying she was cornered was overstating the case somewhat.

I never said she had no right to feel uncomfortable, but if everyone else felt safe moving around, I don’t see any real reason she couldn’t.

42

Actually, I thinly tlw had every right to be concerned. According to the Centre for Disease Control, younger children are at the most risk for dog bites.

And

.

Now admittedly, these numbers are small, when compared to the population at large, but they do suggest that tlw’s concern is not misplaced.
I feel that the ladies in the OP were being very negligent. When you are at a public park with children around, you are the one who needs to be responsible. Your dog may never do anything wrong, but there is the small chance that it will. Dogs are not mindless automatons, and they do think (although I wonder about my dog sometimes :)). They are fully capable of irrational behaviour, and this behaviour may have dipterous consequences.

I also have practical experience in this area, having owned two very wonderful dogs. The first was a German Shepard/Pincher Cross (both breeds which are in the top 10 for attacks leading to fatalities (cite). We were her third owners, and I had trained her to the point where I could direct which way she ran when looking for a stick I had hidden for her to find. As I said, we were her third owners. Her second owners were from Alaska, and had to give her up due to the fact that they were moving to a trailer park that did not allow dogs. Her first owners were not as great though. They were quite abusive, and she was greatly mistreated (we heard this from the second owners). Now, she was trained and obedient to the point where she did not need a leash. When I would walk her behind our house (a large wooded hill side), I would have her unleashed, and she would listen fine. If we saw other dogs, I would leash her up or hold her collar until they passed, unless the other owners said that it was okay to let them meet. I never had a problem. She was also used to children. I would take her with me when I picked up my sister at her school. When I did this she was on her leash at all times, and I would only let her be petted when she was sitting still. She loved children, and most likely, I would have never had a problem not having her on her leash. I never did though, because I knew that while she may be well behaved now, I don’t know what might trigger an inappropriate response in her, so I made sure that I was in control of her at all times. Unfortunately, she passed away from a heart tumour a year and a half ago, so she doesn’t go to the school with me anymore.

The dog I have now is a St. Bernard/Pyrenees mastiff cross. He is very big, and very friendly. Problem is, he has a mind of his own. He will listen and do what he is told most of the time, but when we are outside walking, he loves to run away and do his own thing, coming back all of the time, but only when he is ready. In other words, I do not have complete control over him. Knowing this when I go out, I don’t ever have him off of the leash, and I never take him to the school. Why? Because I feel that I may not be able to control him if something goes wrong, and I don’t want anything bad to happen no matter how low the chance.

43

Actually, I thinly tlw had every right to be concerned. According to the Centre for Disease Control, younger children are at the most risk for dog bites.

And

.

Now admittedly, these numbers are small, when compared to the population at large, but they do suggest that tlw’s concern is not misplaced.
I feel that the ladies in the OP were being very negligent. When you are at a public park with children around, you are the one who needs to be responsible. Your dog may never do anything wrong, but there is the small chance that it will. Dogs are not mindless automatons, and they do think (although I wonder about my dog sometimes :)). They are fully capable of irrational behaviour, and this behaviour may have dipterous consequences.

I also have practical experience in this area, having owned two very wonderful dogs. The first was a German Shepard/Pincher Cross (both breeds which are in the top 10 for attacks leading to fatalities (cite). We were her third owners, and I had trained her to the point where I could direct which way she ran when looking for a stick I had hidden for her to find. As I said, we were her third owners. Her second owners were from Alaska, and had to give her up due to the fact that they were moving to a trailer park that did not allow dogs. Her first owners were not as great though. They were quite abusive, and she was greatly mistreated (we heard this from the second owners). Now, she was trained and obedient to the point where she did not need a leash. When I would walk her behind our house (a large wooded hill side), I would have her unleashed, and she would listen fine. If we saw other dogs, I would leash her up or hold her collar until they passed, unless the other owners said that it was okay to let them meet. I never had a problem. She was also used to children. I would take her with me when I picked up my sister at her school. When I did this she was on her leash at all times, and I would only let her be petted when she was sitting still. She loved children, and most likely, I would have never had a problem not having her on her leash. I never did though, because I knew that while she may be well behaved now, I don’t know what might trigger an inappropriate response in her, so I made sure that I was in control of her at all times. Unfortunately, she passed away from a heart tumour a year and a half ago, so she doesn’t go to the school with me anymore.

The dog I have now is a St. Bernard/Pyrenees mastiff cross. He is very big, and very friendly. Problem is, he has a mind of his own. He will listen and do what he is told most of the time, but when we are outside walking, he loves to run away and do his own thing, coming back all of the time, but only when he is ready. In other words, I do not have complete control over him. Knowing this when I go out, I don’t ever have him off of the leash, and I never take him to the school. Why? Because I feel that I may not be able to control him if something goes wrong, and I don’t want anything bad to happen no matter how low the chance.

44

It sounded to me like everyone else could move around freely because the dogs were near her. She attempted to circle around as you suggested, and one followed her while she was holding their baby. I would have been disturbed as well.

45

Hooray for you, tlw!

My sister and I walk my dogs (on leash) almost every night and have had many run-ins with loose dogs. Generally their owners are nowhere in sight but sometimes it’s someone in their yard or walking without a leash and my outspoken sis will not hesitate to say something. I kind of get embarrased because the people don’t usually take it well, then I think, wait a minute, who’s in the right here?

The loose dogs have made us change routes several times and carry mace and they have made the walks much less enjoyable. I guess we’re gonna have to take a cel phone and start calling animal control on every one of them.

46

I don’t think she was being melodramatic. She made it pretty clear in the OP that she was unsure of what the dogs would do.

Also remember, she was carrying a small child. I’d be pretty damn nervous too with three large dogs on the loose and so encumbered myself. All it would take would be one short dash and a leap by one of those dogs to knock the baby to the ground even if it WERE “only” being playful.

Also, others in the park were of similar mind as they were leaving as well.

47

Thank you, Regina. That is exactly why I don’t walk my dogs any more (we have a fenced in yard, so I just play fetch with 'em out there for exercise). I have two little 25-pound Tasmanian Devil Dogs (Boston Terriers), both of whom are afraid of exactly nothing. They have no idea they’re small dogs. They’re both convinced they are Mastiffs.

All I need to do is meet one unleashed Pit Bull and my 2 whackos will run straight up to it to “play.” To my babies, this means, “bite the other dog’s ears until it play-bows and bites back.” To most dogs larger than mine, it means, “Hey! I’m being attacked. I’ll have to eat you for dinner.”

If I were sure that every dog in my neighborhood was leashed or secured inside its fenced in yard, my pups would get more walks, which they love. At the moment, I can’t find a route that does not involve doing battle with my dogs to get them away from someone else’s uncontrolled beasts. When I put myself in the same position as the OP – substituting the Bichon (and is anyone else singing “Underage Bichon” in their heads, or am I the only TV Funhouse fan here?) for my Bostons, we’d have had a very ugly three on two dogfight on our hands, and with a baby in arms, nothing I could do about it. This is also why I never take my Boston Terrors to the dog park to wreak havoc there… They’ll get themselves killed because of some moron who thinks leashing is “mean.”

Good job and good on the cops as well.

48

My college campus butted right up against the town – right outside of the fenceline were backyards. When we went on rounds through the woods on the perimeter of the campus, we were repeatedly accosted by a huge unleashed Doberman belonging to some blistery syphillitic unwashed cock of a couple that lived in one of the houses next to the campus.

When I say repeatedly, I mean at least once every fucking week during the fall, for two years. It never attacked anyone but it definitely cornered us every chance it got, and did not back off until the owners forcibly restrained it to let us run away. These people were so fucking ridiculously stupid that some of us accidentally achieved Enlightenment while contemplating their behavior – sometimes they let the dog go when we were still in its sight.

And they had the knack for knowing exactly when, as far as running away from a dog, we were psychologically past the point of no return. Any runner will tell you that no matter how hard you push yourself, and no matter how long, your body will always possess a secret energy stash To Be Used Only In Event of Dog. Once towards the end of a set of long, treacherous, and steep-both-ways hill repeats, we heard the jingling sound that fortunately betrayed the killer whenever it was running towards us. It was near the end of an unrewarding season and we were all pretty much losing the will to run.

But I’ll tell you: as soon as we saw that shit-colored form streaking through the trees, we exploded. I’m talking literally the fastest I have ever run, and ever will run, in my life. I know what “literally” means. I did not misuse it just then. And I even had enough energy available to scream very ugly things at the owners, loud enough that they had to hear me. Even if they were still in their house. With pillows wrapped around their heads. And also deaf.

Right then and there we made a pact – if the Doberman ever aggressively cornered any of us, and we numbered more than one at the time, we would do everything we could to kill it. We somehow knew that this was a stupid idea for many reasons, but it was almost like a collective instinctual desire to protect one’s young, except instead of “protect” put “kill,” and for “young” put “Doberman”.

But we were pussies and never did it.

49

Great OP, but it would’ve been better if you had put her in a wristlock and thrown her into a table. In fact, all your pit threads should end that way. “The bagger at Safeway put the eggs in the bag first, then the canned ham on top of them! So I put him in a wristlock and threw him into a table.”

Speaking of assholes with unleashed dogs…

When I was just a little kid, my family got a Great Pyranese as a pet. Fucking gigantic dog, even by the standards of the breed. Total sweetheart, of course. My dad named him “Farkle Barker,” but everyone else just called him Big Dog. He was a rescue dog. A friend of ours found him wandering in the middle of a busy highway after he had apparently jumped out of the back of a moving pick-up truck. We also had a small dachsaund/terrier mix named Zeke.

So, one night my mom takes both dogs and me out for a walk. We’re walking down by the old train tracks when this gangbanger comes from the other direction with an unleashed pit bull. My mom sees him and immediately picks me up (I was four or five at the time) and calls out, asking if the guy will put a leash on his dog. The guy doesn’t respond to her. Instead, he says to his pitbull, “Go get that dog! Kick his ass!” Meaning Farkle, apparently. The pit bull puts its head down and starts growling and stalking. My mom immediately picks me up, both to keep me out of reach of the dog, and to show that there’s a small child present. She says as much to the guy, but he doesn’t give shit. He keeps encouraging his dog to fight Farkle. Zeke, our dauchshund, is starting to freak out and is wrapping his leash around my mom’s ankles, so she picks him up, too. Now she’s got me in one arm, Zeke in the other, and is trying to hold onto Farkle’s leash with one hand. Farkle, to his immense credit, is standing stock still, head up, just watching this other dog creep closer and closer. I pick up on all the tension in the air and start bawling, which sets Zeke off. My mom is screaming at this guy to back his fucking dog off, he’s shouting encouragement at his dog, the pit bull is growling and getting closer and closer. Suddenly, Farkle lunges forward, pulling the leash out of my mom’s hand, and bites the pitbull, once, right on the nose. The dog yelps and hightails it back to his master, but Farkle keeps his ground. He doesn’t chase him; he doesn’t want a fight. All he wants to do is keep his people safe. He hasn’t made a single sound the entire time.

The piece of shit gang member, of course, turns immediatly on his dog. He starts cursing it and beating it with a chain which, apparently, is the dog’s leash when he’s not terrorizing women and small children. My mom sets down Zeke (but not me), grabs Farkle’s leash, and hauls ass back home.

My parents called the cops, of course, but she didn’t get a good look at the guy. It was dark, no street lights, and the fucker never got closer than thirty feet or so. They didn’t have anything to go on. I assume that, sooner or later, the poor pitbull bit someone and had to be destroyed. I hope it was his owner. And I hope it was in a very… sensitive spot.

50

Well, I wasn’t there, so I can’t really say. But I know of no reason to disbelieve her. Especially with her being encumbered with a child. She was afraid, and to state that she was being “melodramatic” and that there was “no actual danger” seems to belittle her situation tremendously, and to discount her very real concerns for infant and self.

I also don’t know that “everyone else felt safe moving around” either. We don’t know how they felt. Perhaps they just felt less unsafe moving than they would have not moving.

51

HOLY SHIT Miller, that sounds fucked up!

Of course, I wouldn’t blame the dog-the owner is totally at fault there-and beating the fucking dog with a CHAIN???

What moron in his right mind tells their dog to fight another dog at random? The asshat could be arrested for that.

Go Farkle!

tlw, I would have been so freaked I’d be crying myself. CrazyCatLady, remember last year, that case where those dogs killed that woman?

Melodramatic my ass. Besides, I’d be afraid to make any sudden moves.

:rolleyes:

52

Well, you pretty much nailed the problem right there. People who do dog fights are morons, and they aren’t in their right minds. Sometimes I think they make you take a standardized test to prove you’re stupid and crazy before they’ll let you fight your dog. Even when these poor animals aren’t outright abused to make them “tough” they tend to live under shamefully neglectful conditions. We used to call the Humane Society on our clients on a pretty regular basis for exactly those reasons.

As for those of you who think I’m being overly dismissive of the OP’s fears, I’ve got one question. If these dogs were commonly perceived as a threat (by other park-goers, and by her husband) wouldn’t someone else have said something to the owner? Hell, wouldn’t her husband have taken the baby to the car ahead of the dog? It just doesn’t really add up to me.

I’m not saying she’s lying, or that she had no reason to be the least bit uncomfortable. I just think that this story, like every story, has three sides. There’s the version we’ve heard, the version the dog owner would probably tell (in which some hysterical woman with a little yap-dog flipped out about the dog standing near her and called the cops), and somewhere in the middle falls the impartial truth.

Of course, I freely and cheerfully admit that I like non-human animals far better than most human animals, and I tend to give the four-leggers the benefit of the doubt most of the time. I don’t trust any animal completely (the day I do is the day I file a workman’s comp claim, after all), but I don’t assume they’re vicious until they show me some evidence.

53

And since nobody called the police about that poor nurse in New York City way back when, I guess that she really didn’t have anything at all to worry about, huh?

54

I’m on both sides of this issue.

I fully admit to off-leashing occasionally, mostly in my own neighborhood, where I was less likely to come across people. And yes, I do that because I belive my dogs to be harmless. But I also know that a)dogs can surprise you, and b)it still freaks other people out. If I’m off-leashing my dog and I see someone else with a dog come near, the first thing I do is leash my dog - before it spots the other animal and gets excited. Same with kids. I know it bothers other people, so when I see people, I immediately take control of my dog -before- it becomes an issue. The fact that this woman a)let her dog get close to people she didn’t know without gaining control of it, and b)got mad at you for asking her to leash it, is absolutely outrageous. If you’re doing something which is already against the rules (off-leashing), how DARE you get upset when someone asks you to comply! How dare you not be proactive about it and comply before being asked!

As I say, I know it’s against the rules to off-leash in certain areas, and that I’m a bad person for doing it, blah blah blah, but I do it, occasionally - that said, when I do it, I’m extra vigilant about what’s going on, and proactively regain control of my dog when any potential problems appear.

Oh, and since we’re naming dogs, I have an 11-pound miniature dachshund (who doesn’t get off-leashed much because he sometimes doesn’t listen, so I only off-leash under what I feel are controllable conditions - no big street nearby and at least 150’ from anything he could be excited by) and until Thanksgiving I had a 14-year old Golden/Lab mix who I walked off-leash all the time because, frankly, he wasn’t capable of running at anything anymore, he could barely keep up with the walks. We finally had to put him to sleep when his body started seriously failing him. But I off-leashed him because his behavior allowed it, and he was physically no longer capable of running at something.

Even then, I usually grabbed his collar if we got near anyone.

55

You know, I like to think that if Kitty Genovese had been walking with her husband, child, and dog, her husband wouldn’t have seen her attackers approaching, scooped up the dog, and left his wife and child to fend for themselves. Maybe I just have an absurdly romanticized view of men, though.

Besides, isn’t it now a crime to not report a dangerous situation like that? I could have sworn our criminology teacher mentioned that such laws had been passed after the Genovese case.

56

I was closest to the dog who was barking – and like I said, it was a deep-chested, insistent bark. My husband was on the other side and end of a picnic bench. The others who left were all behind and alongside us.

The dog may well have been drawn to us first because we had food. In addition to the popcorn we were feeding the birds, we had a hamburger that we were feeding our dog.

I had the baby in a sling around my middle. She couldn’t be passed to my husband nearly as easily as the handle of the dog’s leash. Mr. tlw picked Spunky up because he was so freaked out.

In addition, I’m pregnant (though I’m not at the waddling stage, I’m certainly not going to win any speed trials) and I wasn’t wearing practical shoes. There was no way I could outrun the dog, and I am not in a condition in which a nasty fall and/or the trauma of a dog attack would be all that good for me. My instincts told me that the safest thing I could do was to avoid doing anything sudden and get the dog’s owner to do what she needed to do.

Now, whether or not I’m a melodramatic woman with a little yap-dog, I wasn’t the one breaking the law and creating a dangerous situation in a public park. Regardless of what filthy-mouthed chick’s “side of the story” might be, she was still as wrong as rain at a picnic and if she didn’t want people freaking out over her large, uncontrolled animals or to end up having unintended congress with the cops, she should’ve leashed her animals. Period.

57

Sorry to be the voice of decent here, but this is the type of thread that really depresses me. When I was a little kid growing up playing with the dogs in the park was great. Our dogs, other peoples dogs all us kids and parents loved dogs. I use to take my dogs to the park about 6 years ago. The dogs loved being able to run around and go crazy, and play with the kids and the kids loved it. When I get a dog again I will let them run around off leash at the park(assuming it’s a good tempered well behaved dog). Call the cops if you want, but I pay my taxes, and my dog will be allowed to have fun at the park. A world where dogs spend their whole lives locked up in small yards, or leashed just sucks. Fortunately in my neigborhood parks nobody is that anal. Dogs and people just have fun.

58

Around here, we have this group called “Newf Walk” where about a dozen or so owners of Newfoundland-breed dogs get together and let their dogs socialize with other Newfoundland dogs at a park or whatever. Normally, the parks the group frequents are parks that have been designated as “off-lease” by the city, but, occasionally, we go to one park where dogs are required by law to be on a lease. At this park, no one has a lease one their dog since we’re used to taking them off (or whatever reason other members may have).

Because of all this, it doesn’t surprise me that some people can get upset at dogs not being on a lease, especially when it’s about one metric ton of dog in total. Fines and threatening to take the dog away seems a little harsh. One or the other would have been enough I suspect.

Oddly, the only times that something has happened as been at the off-lease parks. Call it luck I suppose. Not that I think that Shepard was especially lucky, but that’s another matter.

59

Just what are you trying to say to tlw? She posts that she was afraid for her child and herself, and she got angry, and responded in what sounds like an appropriate way to someone else’s extremely inappropriate behavior. You discount her fears and tell everyone that it didn’t happen the way she said. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to accomplish.

60

Do you not have dog runs where you live? That seems like a pretty good alternative to me.