Dogs off a leash in parks

[Nasher]

And? Are we not allowed to protect our children against untrained, potentially dangerous dogs?

As someone who has suffered a nasty bite from a dog (which later got put down) in a public space, I'll continue to keep untrained, potentially dangerous dogs away from my kids thanks.

Problem is anyone can just go and buy a dog but never train it. A bit like my neighbours. Eventually it'll end up getting them in trouble.

There should be more control over dog ownership (and cats). Like there are for other animals which can cause serious injury.

 

[Semple]

Genuine question to dog owners who say something to the effect of "my dog wouldnt hurt anyone" or similar.

Again, genuine question (in the context of when dogs running around a park unleashed for example and come up to someone, be it a kid or adult)....

How do you know they will 100% not hurt or harm them?

Again Im not trying to troll here. I know many friends who are dog owners who have made such comments in the past, but as someone said earlier, I am one of those people who feel that if I say or ask anything that remotely seems "anti-dog" I would black-listed so to speak!

Cheers folks.

Responding as a dog owner, I agree, I couldn't tell you that my dog would 100% not hurt/harm a child.

Just because he's never hurt/harmed a child doesn't mean that he never will if certain circumstances provoked him.

As he's a sausage dog, it's quite a well known breed amongst young children, and whenever we're in a park children always want to pet him.

One thing we always do though is pick him up and hold him whilst they pet him. That way he feels safer and is less likely to go into a "defensive" mode. He's a small dog and if 4 young children surrounded him wanting to pet/stroke him, he'd likely get scared and start barking at them. For such a small boy he's got one hell of a bark on him.

 

[Fubsy]

We're not talking about when they've grown up though, you made the comparison to kicking a naughty child misbehaving on the bus to someone kicking a dog running up to their children in a threatening manner.

It's very simple.

Threat posed to you by a naughty child misbehaving on the bus (or anywhere else) - so small as to be insignificant (unless you're in the US where they seem to periodically get hold of loaded guns )
Threat posed to a child by a dog jumping up and snapping at it's face - potentially life threatening.

There's no real comparison.

Whilst I know that in 99.99%+ cases it will be fine and the dog is most likely just overexcited and coming to say hello, I'm just not willing to take the risk with my kids that this time is that 1/10,000 case.

If you are unwilling/unable to control your dog, then as far as I'm concerned, you lose all right to take offence when someone else is forced to.



The fact you've acknowledged your own argument is absurd, but still continue to labour the point just proves that you're more interested in being a **** than actually discussing a valid point in good faith, so I'll leave you to it.

You've wasted time replying to that. I was clearly being facetious (as someone else already pointed out) but that was to point out the absurdness of booting every dog that ever misbehaves. What do you know about dogs to judge if it's aggressive or not? Booting a playful dog could turn a safe situation into a deadly one through ignorance.

Don't leave your house with a dangerous untrained dog that connot be controlled.

Never leave the house with your child if you want to protect them from every danger.

Don't kick dogs unless given no choice, not as a first strike Cobra Kai style defence.

 

[flea.rider]

my 2 are both rescue dogs ..and can be a bit iffy this i know. there dog de bordeaux 24st between them if walked on the street they are harnessed and holtied ..never let off.. 3 times a week they go to a private field for an hr a time ..
they were both mistreated and it's took a lot of hard work to get them to trust again ..they love the family not so much anyone else ..

 

[Adam-r]

One thing we always do though is pick him up and hold him whilst they pet him. That way he feels safer and is less likely to go into a "defensive" mode. He's a small dog and if 4 young children surrounded him wanting to pet/stroke him, he'd likely get scared and start barking at them. For such a small boy he's got one hell of a bark on him.

picking up dogs in this situation is generally not thought to be a good idea for a variety of reasons. I’ll let you research why, but the main one being is it limits your dogs natural fight or flight response. If your dog doesn’t want to be fussed, it will bark and warn off whoever is trying it on. Once you have it held up against you, you’ve narrowed its options significantly. It also gives the would be stroker a false impression that your dog it totally harmless. Let it deal with things on the ground, in its own way. It’ll likely get out of the way if it’s not bothered.
Have a read up on it. Interesting stuff.

 

[ThundyCat]

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the useless comment, Don't post in this thread again.

I totally agree with you OP, owners should keep their dogs on a leash in public areas. It's happened to us before, and we've got covered in muck from their paws.

 

[200sols]

Problem is anyone can just go and buy a dog but never train it. A bit like my neighbours. Eventually it'll end up getting them in trouble.

There should be more control over dog ownership (and cats). Like there are for other animals which can cause serious injury.

Anyone can have a kid and never train it, lets be honest far far more harm is caused by out of control kids than by dogs.

 

[Fubsy]

What breed was it?

When we got a puppy and did some extensive research, one main point was socialising it early. So as soon as he'd had his jabs, we'd take him for walks amongst other dogs and children, sit in cafes etc. I believe he's much more mellowed out because of this.

You make the good point about not knowing a dogs upbringing, which makes it much harder for people to adopt a dog. A lot of dogs that have needed to be rehomed will likely have behavioral issues.

Breed was Canaan. Met his parents, his breeder and brothers and sisters multiple times before collecting - no warning signs other than the stand off-bark-approach-introduce scenario that they do when meeting new people on their territory. He was so easy to train all the usual stuff like paw, sit, down, here, wait, stay, rollover etc. but the socialising was stressful for him and for us as it was relentless with little or backwards progress made each time. If you gave him a break (days not hours) he wasn't getting socialised, if you kept on you were keeping him at a very high alert level. It's great when everything goes well, but when it starts going wrong then it's a nightmare situation all round. We have two lab-crosses now and they are "boring" in comparison, but they are super chilled out.

Grr, this thread just highlights how people tar all dog owners with the same brush because of owners that do not train their dogs to not jump up, don't recall them early enough (or don't train them to recall at all!), let them roam too far and don't react in the correct manner for the surroundings.

 

[Nasher]

Anyone can have a kid and never train it, lets be honest far far more harm is caused by out of control kids than by dogs.

Well something should be done about that too, but people would have a meltdown if it was suggested

 

[Ahleckz]

I've got a golden retreiver. In the park? He's off the lead, it's a park so you should expect to see dogs off lead. If we're near a picnic area, or I see people sitting down on the grass eating then I'll keep him to heel or put him on the lead but just walking through the park? He's off the lead.

He won't come up and jump on you, if he's been in the water then he'll have a shake but I'll usually have him beside me and it'll be right on the waters edge - not right in the middle of the ice cream van queue.

Ultimately, if you are using the outdoors then you should expect to see outdoor things and this includes dogs running around. I accept if you have a bitey dog or a dangerous one then it shouldn't be off lead but the majority of dogs are fine and will ignore you if you ignore them.

Kids are generally fine, they often come and say hello to him. The ones that obviously look anxious or nervous then I'll try and cross the street or put him on the lead.

 

[ahar]

Co-indicentally, for the first time ever a dog off the leash was being really agressive to me and the kids in a park a couple of weeks ago. Never had that before, just loads of friendly dogs over the years being enthusiastic. We were just walking along a path and it ran up to us, started growling, bearing teeth etc.

Dog very nearly got stamped on by me as it was looking very likely it was going to bite.

 

[Fubsy]

^^ what did the owner do?

This year and lockdown will have produced a lot of dogs that can't have been socialised properly I'd have thought too.

 

[Cavallino]

Responding as a dog owner, I agree, I couldn't tell you that my dog would 100% not hurt/harm a child.

Just because he's never hurt/harmed a child doesn't mean that he never will if certain circumstances provoked him.

As he's a sausage dog, it's quite a well known breed amongst young children, and whenever we're in a park children always want to pet him.

One thing we always do though is pick him up and hold him whilst they pet him. That way he feels safer and is less likely to go into a "defensive" mode. He's a small dog and if 4 young children surrounded him wanting to pet/stroke him, he'd likely get scared and start barking at them. For such a small boy he's got one hell of a bark on him.

I wish all dog owners would be as conscientious as you are.
Thank you.

 

[Maundie]

I genuinely think there should be a test, licence, home inspection and proper policing of dog ownership. No one on an estate should own an alsatian, and if the only time it goes out is to **** on the street, it must be a miserable existence.

I agree with this 100%, I've also been saying for years that people should be tested before being allowed to breed uncontrollably, there's more 'feral' kids in this country than dogs and you usually find the one's with uncontrollable dog's have the same issues with kids because the cba to look after either properly.

 

[Slam62]

Lol at comparing kids to dogs.

Must be a dog owner.

I've experience of both my kids were perfect blah blah blah

 

[Slam62]

Co-indicentally, for the first time ever a dog off the leash was being really agressive to me and the kids in a park a couple of weeks ago. Never had that before, just loads of friendly dogs over the years being enthusiastic. We were just walking along a path and it ran up to us, started growling, bearing teeth etc.

Dog very nearly got stamped on by me as it was looking very likely it was going to bite.

Tbh the law states something like if a dog even makes people think they may have an issue, the dog is an out of control dangerous dog.

Owners need to keep dogs tightly controlled, but sadly a lot don't.

 

[LOAM]

Our two year old was knocked over the other day in our park by some massive beast that came from behind us and just ran in to the back of her, next thing its face is in her face and we honestly thought it was going to attack her. Its owner is running behind it at this point shouting "its ok, its ok, it wont hurt her" which was ironic as it already had hurt her. There's signs all over our park about dogs being kept on leashes but there's quite a few idiots that just ignore them.

 

[Semple]

Whilst i did have a quick chuckle at the video, this just highlights how a dogs instincts can overpower all their training.

picking up dogs in this situation is generally not thought to be a good idea for a variety of reasons. I’ll let you research why, but the main one being is it limits your dogs natural fight or flight response. If your dog doesn’t want to be fussed, it will bark and warn off whoever is trying it on. Once you have it held up against you, you’ve narrowed its options significantly. It also gives the would be stroker a false impression that your dog it totally harmless. Let it deal with things on the ground, in its own way. It’ll likely get out of the way if it’s not bothered.
Have a read up on it. Interesting stuff.

I do get what you're saying. You can't win either way really. If you don't expose your dog to social situations like that, then they become antisocial and quite possibly more aggressive to other people/animals. Mini-dachsunds are quite sociable dogs, so he does lap up the attention, but being less than a foot off the ground he can get a bit scared when there's suddenly a few clumsy young children wanting to pet him.

It also highlights an interesting point, a responsible parent will always ask if it's okay to pet the dog, you should never just assume the dog is happy to be petted.

 

[Cavallino]

Our two year old was knocked over the other day in our park by some massive beast that came from behind us and just ran in to the back of her, next thing its face is in her face and we honestly thought it was going to attack her. Its owner is running behind it at this point shouting "its ok, its ok, it wont hurt her" which was ironic as it already had hurt her. There's signs all over our part about dogs being kept on leashes but there's quite a few idiots that just ignore them.

This is exactly what I meant when I asked the question earlier on. reference owners who think their dogs "wont hurt".
Their definition of "hurt" is very broad.
How am I or my child able to differentiate if a dog running at us at Mach 6, is simply excited or is genuinely hellbent on tearing us limb from limb?
My perception/understanding could be different to the owners. Especially for people who are not familiar with owning pets.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Tbh the law states something like if a dog even makes people think they may have an issue, the dog is an out of control dangerous dog.

Owners need to keep dogs tightly controlled, but sadly a lot don't.

I don't think that's true and if it is its not implemented.

I had to report an extremely dangerous bunch of rottweilers. The breeder was keeping them in 2 large cages in his back garden. He then had a metal fence going from one side of the garden to the other effectively a bigger cage which was 80% of his back garden. He would let them out of the smaller cages into the bigger area and that was it. No social interaction, no playing with them, no real care. He just fed them, swore at them and kept them in cages.

It was great he had a metal fence protecting his own home and family from them. The other 3 sides cheap wooden panels which they tore through on several occasions or battered down.

They were trying to attack other neighboring dogs out in their gardens.

They also attacked the breeders dad when he came round to speak with his son or do something in the garden.

These were literally killer dogs. When I reported them and the fact they had attacked people and destroyed fences and were trying to get at other dogs the inspector was more worried about the dogs health and safety than that of its victims and potential victims.

He didn't like the fact they were being kept in cages outdoors 24/7, 365 days a year. With just the basics.

What I was worried about was if those killers tore through the fence again and mauled a child to death.

You couldn't have company over the dogs would start barking like mad and ramming the fence and trying to climb it. Until the owner came out and swore at them and put them back in their smaller cages.

I'm sure that there are good owners out there but it only takes one bad breeder or owner and you have a large issue on your hands. It's disgusting that there is no proper policing or regulation.

All the people here comparing dogs to kids are hilarious. I'd like to see them as a child Vs a killer rottweiler and see how that goes. Only one is going to cause serious harm, pain and death.