Yes, you.
The man with the toddler in tow and the happy lab running twenty feet ahead of him.
I saw you from the other end of the street. I saw your dog wasn’t on leash. I saw your lack of attention to your dog.
I crossed the street. You noticed me with my two giant dogs, but you didn’t bother to grab your dog.
Your dog noticed us. He sprinted at us full speed with his hackles raised.
My dogs growled. He didn’t stop.
They realized your dog was only interested in greeting them (and not harming me), so growling ceased and they wanted to play.
But you didn’t hear the growling.
You just shouted your dog’s name (which he didn’t respond to) and you tried to run to us with your toddler in tow. It took you 30 seconds to reach us.
Do you have any idea what could have happened in those 30 seconds?
You’re lucky my dogs are friendly.
My dog, Max, is incredibly iffy with other dogs. Sometimes he likes them, most other times he doesn’t. i HATE owners who don’t leash their dogs. Most irresponsible and selfish. Anything could have happened…
Leashing your dog is so easy and I don’t understand why people don’t do it. You would think seeing two massive dogs would be enough to get control of your dog.
Wowzers, I’m glad all was ok, not fun to be in that situation.
I was just really happy the dog turned out to be friendly. A bit off on social interaction, but generally friendly.
Yeah, having a dog off leash means you must have your dog 100% under voice control. It would have taken a moment to leash up his pup.
Unfortunately, a happy experience with Atka and Mauja won’t teach this man a thing. Only when his dog gets hurt will he learn his lesson.
It’s unfortunate that’s what it takes for people to learn…
Wow! I absolutely love how you did this post!
And you are SO right! It takes a matter of seconds for a bad situation to turn worse!
ღ husky hugz ღ frum our pack at Love is being owned by a husky!
Aww, thanks! He’s just lucky Mauja and Atka are so chill.
Ugh. This happened to us once and I can only imagine what was going through your head walking 2 large breed dogs. When it happened to me I was dragged across the front yard, Sherman bit the dog and we were all traumatized for a long time. So much so that I wouldn’t walk the dogs together by myself for over a year. I wish people would use their brains.
Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. I’m so happy our situation didn’t turn out that way. I don’t understand some people.
So, so true. If it had been two out of three of my dogs, it wouldn’t have gone so well. I can’t imagine letting your dog run at two big dogs, or any dog, but I’ve certainly seen it happen. I almost lost my beagle once because of it…she did not want to be greeted and she squirmed right out of her harness trying to get away from this “friendly” dog (they think it’s such a help if they yell “he’s friendly”, except it’s too late for me to yell back “mine’s not”).
I absolutely hate when people yell, “oh, he’s friendly”. I don’t care; maybe my dog isn’t friendly.
Sadly he will probably the kind of father that he is a dog walker. And then wonder why his kid ended up in juvenile hall with some very bad habits.
Unfortunately, you’re probably right.
This happens too often, and I’ll be talking about it in a post next month. One time there were 3 Labradors running up to Bain, he is great with other dogs, but if something were to ever happen, I know I would be blamed even if Bain was leashed and their dogs were not.
It’s terrible how that works. The responsible owners tend to take the heat for the idiots out there.
As they say in my old neighborhood: “you go girl – read him right!” I too struggle with people who have their own set of rules for their dogs off leash that do not have strong voice command skills.
It’s maddening. The worst part is that this happened on the military base where we live. The base has a leash law, yet so many people just do whatever they want.
And most of those people will yell out, no worries, he’s friendly, to which Mom replies, but mine aren’t always! Idiots!
Exactly. People can be so dumb.
OMG. That right there? That is my nightmare. When I’m walking Lucas, I’m constantly scanning for dogs because it WOULD have a bad outcome. I hate having to yell, “He’s not friendly!” to get people to leash their dogs. What I really want to yell is, “He is super dog selective, and an off-leash strange dog running up at full speed is terribly threatening. Get your dog so my sweet angel isn’t forced into acting in such a way that will make all of us very unhappy!” But, you know, that would probably take too long…
That’s exactly how our first dog was. It wasn’t that he wasn’t friendly, but he didn’t appreciate dogs barreling at him while he was leashed. We would work SO hard on training only for idiots to set us back weeks of progress. Just leash your dogs, people.
Oh no!! I’m sorry that happened to you! I had a little incident yesterday where I was that “man” but my dog didn’t run up to anyone. I took Zoe off leash to do a training session and because she had been cooped up she had some zoomies and totally embarrassed me in front of a park full of people. Luckily, she did not run up to anyone but lesson learned. Even with the insane amount of training I’ve done, dogs are still dogs.
Never, ever a good situation. People with an unleashed dog never stop to think about how the owner of a leashed dog may act. All they think is ‘well, my dog is friendly so it’s ok.’
It is so very not ok. Makes my teeth grind!
I don’t care what a person’s reason is, I just don’t feel like there’s ever a time when a dog should be off leash in this manner. Even if he’s the perfect, most well-behaved dog in the world, what if he encounters dogs that aren’t so perfect? What if your dogs had been aggressive to strange dogs? Man, what a disaster, and all because the owner was ignorant.
Great post, thanks for sharing!
What a stupid owner. 2 large dogs could have killed his small dog within seconds and him and his toddler could have witnessed it. I know your dogs are friendly, and under control but what about the owner that has aggressive , not so friendly dogs on the other end of those leashes?
So Luna isn’t always very friendly when she is on leash. It’s unpredictable who she will react to. I also live in an apartment complex so everyone is out walking their dogs at the exact same time (before and after work). One day after work, I was out with Luna while 100 other people also were and this guy was out by the poop station with his little Yorkie. At first I thought he was just using one of those retractable leashes and I just couldn’t see it because it was dark, but no he had no leash and his little dog came running over to Luna. Fortunately I was quick to react, but boy did I let him have it. And his reaction was just like “Huh?” UGH.
Good letter! I wonder if some people passively-aggressively wish their dogs would run away?
I had a foster dog over the summer who was NOT good meeting other dogs on leash. We had a few scary moments when approached by off leash dogs — luckily, nothing ever happened, but it could have.
I really wish people would leash their dogs — the ones that we encounter off leash always seem to be the crazy ones that don’t listen!
As luck would have it, things turned out okay that day for all the dogs and humans involved.
I run up against this every day in my neighborhood walks with my dog. Every other home has a dog or two and cats, too. In my two years here I have never seen a neighbor walk a dog on a leash! In fact, they don’;t walk them at all, they are just off leash and many are not so friendly! I’ve had some frightful experiences, I’ve also had my dog search for and find and we’d return neighbor’s dogs who ran off and didn’t come back! And these people are just standing in the driveway talking to me about it rather than looking for their dogs! And sometimes it’s the same dogs over and over again!