Why, why, why would you do this ?

Why, why, why?

I’m pretty sure the vast majority of dog owners love their dogs, and wouldn’t think of doing anything that would endanger their lives.

So I find it unfathomable to see so many dogs being walked off lead in busy city streets.

I absolutely adore my dogs from the bottom of my heart, and of course think they are super intelligent 🙄, but would I allow them to walk free, without a lead anywhere where there are cars, buses, Lorrie’s etc…….  NEVER

Though The cleverest dogs in the world (according to me) I know they do not understand the danger of traffic on the streets.

So if someone can explain why it’s a good thing to do I’d love to hear.

I know of 7 clients dogs who have died because they were off lead on busy streets and ran across a road .

The shocking thing for me is there is more, and more of it, in the last couple of weeks I’ve seen, nearly every day dogs walking off lead on BUSY London streets, I guess some people do it for their ego, thinking how clever they look!

From what I can see there are two distinct groups.

The super excessively trained dog who has lost all sense of self, doesn’t think for itself and just follows instructions walking along just looking up at its owner for direction for all actions.

This is so sad to me to see , dogs that have all their character, choices, agency taken away from them.

Naturally dogs would stop sniff, mark, actually not only normal behaviour, but also calming, these dogs don’t as the whole focus is waiting for instructions.

Or dogs who are nose down all over the place sniffing doing their thing, being shouted at to keep close, stressing the dog. This happened to me last week, a puppy, probably about 4 months old ran to the middle of the road when he saw me with my dogs. He was shouted at cowered went back to the pavement, the guy was still shouting at him he didn’t go to him, in the end the puppy just cowered on the pavement! 🤷‍♀️ , as you can imagine I had a few choice words for them.

A while back a lady came into the shop, as she walked in I saw a dog walk past off lead, I asked her if it was her dog, she said not, we then saw some people come round the corner, he was totally out of sight for maybe 30 seconds.

We then chatted, a friend of hers had two border collies, super highly trained as search and rescue dogs, they would fly into earthquake and disaster zones to find people.

As her dogs were so highly trained she thought they would be fine to walk off lead in London. There was a trigger, the dog reacted, ran across the road and died. My point is even a super clever highly trained dog doesn’t have the mental capacity to make a decision about not running across the road.

The reality is a squirrel could run across its path, he could see a cat, a car could back fire, kids could be throwing fireworks, there might be a shop with lovely food smells, many things could cause your dog to walk/run across the road, this happens, has happened to 7 dogs I knew.

Aside of anything, you are liable if your dog creates an accident, and I know here a dog off lead is not allowed on the streets, you can be fined.

Please, please if you do walk on busy streets with your dog off lead really think about what you’re doing, it’s just not worth it.