[gretch]

As a dog owner, I agree with you.

I KNOW that my dog would never hurt anyone.

But I also know that no one else in the world has spent hundreds of hours with my dog, and to them he is a strange and large animal. Inevitably some of these ppl probably have some kind of childhood trauma related to dogs.

So I always have him leashed where the rules are to have a leash.

[Fomite]

This. As a dog owner, my dog remains on a leash. I don't know you. I don't know your dog.

More than once, I've been put in the position where my dog is getting agitated because they're on leash, their dog can't be controlled because they're off leash, and we're rapidly approaching the "Swift kick or risk injury" stage.

"My dog is off leash because I want them to have freedom" is a profoundly selfish decision if you're in a place to encounter other dogs.

[bartread]

> "My dog is off leash because I want them to have freedom" is a profoundly selfish decision if you're in a place to encounter other dogs.

This is cultural, I think. In the UK at least it’s often the norm for dogs to be off leash in open areas like commons (public land, usually grassy or wooded, or a mix of the two), or in other settings where they’re away from roads and won’t encounter livestock.

On public footpaths in the countryside farmers will put up signs indicating where livestock are and where dogs need to be kept on leash. The rest of the time, again, most dogs will be off leash.

Compliance is really high, with almost all dog owners I see following these rules.

There’s a deterrent as well: if your dog is bothering farm animals the farmer is within their rights to shoot the dog.

I do think the post you’re responding to has a very naive view of dog psychology though. Thousands of years of selective breeding means that dogs are fundamentally not wild animals, and as such their behaviours and needs are quite different from their wild relations, such as wolves. Many breeds of dog are so far removed that they would very likely be incapable of surviving in the wild: I’m thinking principally of designer breeds like pugs which, overall, I strongly disapprove of.

[darby_nine]

Interesting that livestock is the primary concern—I'd imagine interactions with other dogs (which can be highly stressful, though this varies a lot from dog to dog) would be the primary issue these days.

[wizzwizz4]

Livestock haven't gone away.

[darby_nine]

Sure, but their dominance in culture compared to dogs certainly has.

[bartread]

What is this world that some of you seem to live in where interactions with other dogs are, apparently, incredibly problematic?

Dogs encounter eachother all the time when you're out on a walk and it's... fine (again, I'm talking UK here). What's the worst thing that happens that you're all paranoid about your dog meeting, gasp, the horror... another dog?

This makes no sense to me.

[darby_nine]

Yes. Dogs meeting other dogs can be extremely stressful. What is your confusion? Let me help you.

I assure you, even in the uk, dogs are still dogs.

[cafard]

Depends on the dogs. There have been a few dogs in my neighborhood that have attacked other dogs, with the dog that came off worse requiring veterinary attention. In one case the dogs were on leash, but each probably outweighed the walker.

To be fair, I am talking about three or four incidents over twenty years.

[Unearned5161]

this video corroborates your cultural hypothesis

https://youtu.be/3GRSbr0EYYU?si=Q15kFkFBE-aW2ail

[bartread]

That remains, in some ways, one of the funniest videos on the internet[0], but the dog owner was and is an absolute moron. Imagine letting your dog off the lead near a herd of deer. That incident took place in a literal deer park. They're not livestock, per se, but, no surprise, the outcome is about the same as letting your dog off the lead in a field of sheep, and the consequences could have been much more serious.

[0] To the point where we briefly considered naming a dog Fenton, but then realised the humour would wear off pretty quickly and it wouldn't really be fair on the dog.

[mhb]

I realize this question is likely not to be appreciated by many, but do you not know whether your dog is male or female?

[amanaplanacanal]

I must be stupid. Try as I might, I can’t figure out what prompted this question. What am I missing?

[mhb]

The use of the gender-neutral plural pronoun to refer to the dog instead of he/she/him/her.

...my dog is getting agitated because they're on leash...

[amanaplanacanal]

Ahhh. I’m so used to that construction I didn’t even see it. If you have had the same experience with multiple dogs of both genders, how would you put it?

[mhb]

I would use "he/him" because the convention of using he/him for singular, indeterminate gender is no more difficult to understand than that "they/them" is being used as singular, indeterminate.

Ideally, I would like the people for whom this is important to use a new unambiguous word. Though this ship seems to have sailed despite there apparently being a number of possible candidates.

That aside, the author of the post to which we are referring must know the sex of his dog so why be ambiguous?

[jjtheblunt]

My un-favorite is the people with dogs on the spring loaded extending leashes, who let their little crazy dog come running at my feral-parents dog from a distance, announcing "don't worry...my dog is friendly.".

The people _never_ ask if my dog on her 2 meter leash (the law in Arizona, btw) is friendly, dangerous, anything. They just announce that their dog isn't dangerous to us.

So often the small dog runs up to my dog's face full speed, centimeter from her nose, gets satan-barked at and driven away from us. she's sensibly trying to protect me and her from the little barely tethered full speed maniac.

The people ask if my dog was abused. Nope: had her since she was three months old, the feral mom and others were all adopted. They just don't seem to consider that _they_ were aggressive, in dog body language. And that's hopefully eye opening for them.

[imoverclocked]

Just yell back “Mine isn’t!” Then you both get a little bit of an adrenaline rush…

On a serious note, I miss the wide open spaces I could bring my dogs to in AZ. Where I live in NorCal it’s practically impossible and even if I could let my dog off leash in some places, the poison oak often stops me from even considering it.

[jjtheblunt]

Yeah, that's what works, even though she is friendly, just guards her pack. Like you surmised, it's often amusing watching the reactions.

Be glad in NorCal there aren't the ubiquitous rattlesnakes and babies this time of year. And of course the heat is an outdoors dealbreaker still for a few more weeks, except at dawn. Canine cabin fever. But i sure miss the more pleasant outdoorsy weather in NorCal.

[cafard]

I get along with most of the many dogs in my neighborhood quite well. But my experience has said that there are owners whose confidence in a dog considerably outruns any basis for it.