Yikes. My tablet has run amuck!!!

Anne

STEP AWAY FROM THE WINE BOTTLE!

Sam,
In fairness to us you added a little more info from your initial post.

Rural

GPS


Just saying.

We are sometimes a little more blunt then is ideal but we have the dogs best interest at heart as I'm sure you do.

Sam, I heartily agree that it is easy to misunderstand, misinterpret, misjudge, when we are talking about written posts on an Internet discussion board. In your other thread about having your pup off leash at a truck stop, I know I wasn't the only one who was picturing something more like a noisy, busy freeway rest stop with cars and trucks whizzing by.

As far as having your dog off leash where you may encounter other people or dogs, I believe there is also a big difference between public multi-use parks or neighborhoods in suburbia and a rural area commonly used for hunting.

This board is currently composed of people who do a wide variety of things with their dogs. Competitive obedience and/or schutzhund is only one small portion. Other members have family/companion dogs with no sport or competition aspirations, others have personal service dogs, SAR dogs, or are involved in a wide variety of activities from agility to rally to tracking to herding to mushing. There are also people here who are current or former military or police K-9 handlers, and people who have working farm dogs.

What I'm trying to say is I think the board benefits from a wide variety of input and interaction. A hunting dog owner is more than welcome here. But, again, in fairness, as others have mentioned, there were a few things that were misunderstood in your first couple of posts, and that's why you got the responses you did.

Edited by Cheri Grissom (12/18/2013 09:35 AM)
Edit reason: thought of a few more types of dog owners; I'm sure I've still forgotton some!

And back to the topic of the OP:

 Quote: Carol Blumlein

I would love to know why it is that so many people feel they must have their dogs off leash in"uncontrolled/unmanaged" circumstances?

If you ask them, some will say, "Oh he/she always follows me".

The really experienced trainers I know, very seldom have their dogs off leash in public. It seems to be the casual owners.

I don't know the answer, either, Carol. I guess I'm fortunate in that I rarely run across loose dogs. We have a lot of parks in the area where I live, they all have leash laws, and most people obey them. I have come across people walking leashed dogs that scared the daylights out of me. So I do think that being leashed or unleashed is a totally different thing than being controlled or uncontrolled.

I believe leash laws should be obeyed, period. I believe people should be comfortable going for a walk, with their dogs, with their kids, or by themselves, without having to worry about unknown dogs approaching them. I believe people who are walking with their dogs in public, whether on leash or in an approved off-leash area should have their dogs under control.

Unfortunately, that's a perfect-world scenario, and we live in a less-than-perfect world.

You bring up a good point, Cheri. It not just an issue of dogs being off-leash. Rather, it also an issue of having a dog under control. It's just as unnerving passing a dog on a leash that is lunging, snarling, and barking at your dog and knowing if it were not for that leash, that dog would be attacking me and my dog. I know we won't solve anything with this thread but it's good to vent. If one person reads this and changes their behavior or gets more serious about training, then it will have been worth it.

I sure didn't mean to contribute to driving someone away from this board but, as others have said, I also pictured a much more dangerous scenario with the information originally posted and have seen way too many times how someone thinks they know or can control their dog and, in a flash, finds out otherwise, myself included.

I live in a rural area where people just seem to think it's fine letting their dogs wander.

I really can't walk dogs down my road unless I bring another person. How crazy is that? My front couple acres is fenced to keep dogs off my property and I'm getting ready to do the same with the back 5 acres. We kind of add to our fence line constantly. ROFL

FWIW, JMHO, from what I'm seeing and gathering on the other thread, the remoteness of the area does not excuse what caused the gut reactions to begin with. In the OP of the "Good Day..." thread, Sam posted that the dog was allowed to approach strangers, was loose in the PARKING LOT, and did not recall when he decided to sniff some garbage.

Your initial reactions were all warranted, and, to be blunt, Sam is in denial about the fact that his harmless hound puppy should be leashed.

Sorry about my honest feelings...

I agree, and nothing I was worried about has changed (including the scenarios I mentioned on page one here).

I guess what I hope is that we can point out what we sincerely believe, after many years (decades, for many posting here) of experience and of seeing what can happen -- and does happen way too often. I hope the points made here reach many many anonymous readers (at any given time, dozens of anonymous readers are looking at these threads while only a couple of logged-members may be).

NO ONE wants to drive away a poster. EVERYONE on these two threads wants to help keep puppies and dogs safe. (I know these folks, and I know that they care first and foremost about the well-being of the dogs.)

I really hope that Sam will understand this. I hope even more that he'll continue to feel free to post, give good news, ask questions, and share here.

Who among us hasn't had something pointed out to us by what seems like a zillion people here after a post .... I sure have. I resented it at first, too. But then we realize what everyone is saying and why they're saying it and we move on.

Thanks Connie for fixing that for me. tablet!

Bob....I think the problem was that I needed MORE WINE!!!!! LOL It appears that I am safer with my laptop then with my tablet.