People walking cats and rabbits on leads in parks

[AvocadosBeforeMortgages]

Utter fools. Do they not like their pets?

I've come across this at least 4 times now - people (all different!) walking cats and, in one case, a rabbit, on a lead.

In all cases, these are parks where dogs are allowed off lead and the vast majority are off lead. Including everything from ex-racing greyhounds to terriers.

I spoke to rabbit woman and pointed out the dangers. She said she'd just pick the rabbit up - while seemingly failing to account for the fact greyhounds can travel at 40mph and jump higher than she could possibly lift the rabbit.

Yesterday I saw this on-lead cat before my own dog did (a small miracle - from a distance I thought it was a puppy), and warned them my dog wasn't cat friendly. They then decided to stop sitting down in the park and instead FOLLOW US through the park.

Presumably when it goes wrong they'll be whining that the dog was out of control - but presumably they'd also be whining if they wandered out blindfolded onto a 70mph road and got run over. It's asking for trouble.

I'm not convinced cats or rabbits enjoy being walked - and surely the much safer / more pragmatic option would be to walk them somewhere where dogs aren't allowed to be off lead?

Let's pray this doesn't catch on as a trend

Sorry just re-read and saw you meant the cemeteries and no-dog parks I suggested.

Again I'm afraid I can't really be personally responsible for ensuring there are no dogs in all of those areas 🤷‍♀️

@bunniesanddaisies

The op has claimed that the vast majority of dogs are off lead including greyhounds. At no point has she indicated this is perhaps not a good idea.

Quite.

I think it’s a good point that it’s easier said than done to find a dog free area to walk a cat-I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere and didn’t see on or off lead dogs. Maybe a town centre would at least have no off lead dogs, but I think this would not be an enjoyable walk for a cat. I think I’d either hire a private field or go for a footpath with a field with livestock in (even then you could find an out of control dog). But in urban areas, I can see that a park would be the only place you could feasibly walk a cat. So I can understand that an owner would weigh up the risks and decide to take the risk of a dog attacking her cat than have the cat indoors all the time if they didn’t have a garden and there was a reason the cat couldn’t free roam (which is also very risky).
Whenever I post about having a reactive dog people love to trot out “just walk somewhere with no off lead dogs”. Obviously I try my best-I don’t want to see off lead dogs and have to ask their owners to keep away but in reality there just aren’t many public places where you won’t see a dog. Which is precisely why it’s essential that dog owners are considerate and keep dogs under control-on lead or with RELIABLE recall. Public spaces are for everyone, badly trained dog’s that apparently need to run riot for their mental health aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

During your walks you have an important role to play as your cat’s guardian and protector. Cats have a great sense of smell but in some ways don’t see as well as we do, particularly during the daytime. As well the outside world is full of potential hazards which an indoor cat has never experienced, and may not recognize as dangerous. It’s extremely important for the cat’s guardian to watch out for other animals (particularly dogs off leash), dangerous objects, harmful plants and other potential hazards. A cat out in the open in a harness may be more interested in a special scent than something off in the distance, so you have to be their lookout.

www.bluecrossanimalhospital.ca/cats/train-your-cat-walk-on-leash/

So if someone has a dog that becomes reactive or needs on lead exercise, or a cat that can’t be allowed to free roam due to a change in circumstances are they meant to move to the middle of nowhere so they can find somewhere quiet to exercise their pet? Or pay £10 to hire a private field every time they want to exercise their pet(and these don’t exist everywhere). Or should they use public spaces and be terrified of an encounter with an out of control dog?
All so other people’s dogs can have a lovely time and run around untrained pestering the public.
Or should we all take responsibility for our own pets and keep them under control at all times in public.

That said there will always be bad dog owners so you probably shouldn’t take a cat to a busy park if you can possibly avoid it as it is very risky for cats. Still the dog owners fault if it gets attacked but you’d want to avoid an attack anyway. I’m not sure there’s a solution.

We should carry on trying to be respectful and diligent pet owners. I imagine many of these people walking ferrets and cats etc are only trying to provide enrichment for their animals (albeit in some cases misguided). As a dog owner in these situations, I think the onus is on them to keep their dog under control, after all they are in possession of the animal that can potentially do the most amount of damage, although my cat might argue with that.

I was chatting with one of my DC about this thread - he'd seen a monitor lizard being walked on a harness and lead on ITV the other night. Apparently the owner had successfully overturned his local council ban on walking his pet in local parks. We wondered how out of control dogs and especially their entitled and irresponsible owners - who give the rest of us a bad name - would deal with coming across a monitor lizard....or rather how the monitor lizard would deal with them.

My dog has decent recall and is generally walked comfortably in our local park without bothering other people. There is someone with a cat on a lead who I’ve seen occasionally and I put my dog on the lead when I spot the cat. She only walks the cat late at night so far as I’ve seen. I would do the same if someone decided to walk a sheep in the park. I would take all steps to keep my dog from attacking or harassing it, and if I thought the sheep owner was daft and risking what to the dog owner would be a risk of letting their dog off-lead they couldn’t reasonably have anticipated but to the sheep owner a very present and obvious risk - well, my thoughts are my own!

Better than indoor cats. Unless they're in a mansion it must be a depressing existence.

If you can't offer your pet a safe stress-free opportunity to exercise then you probably should consider whether keeping it is in its best interests and whether you're meeting your duty of care under the animal welfare act

Thankyou for expert advice ( ive never took mine for a walk in a park simply commenting that an animal will not move if they do not wish)
However having animals with Special medical needs can mean they are not able to roam alone so yes, a harmess and lead needed!
Happily met my ‘duty of care’ thank you animals lived longer than life expectancy with multiple needs health needs.

@MrMeSeeks

If you can't offer your pet a safe stress-free opportunity to exercise then you probably should consider whether keeping it is in its best interests and whether you're meeting your duty of care under the animal welfare act

Thankyou for expert advice ( ive never took mine for a walk in a park simply commenting that an animal will not move if they do not wish)
However having animals with Special medical needs can mean they are not able to roam alone so yes, a harmess and lead needed!
Happily met my ‘duty of care’ thank you animals lived longer than life expectancy with multiple needs health needs.

Sorry I'm not sure I understand

Are you saying that people should own pets despite not offering them a safe stress free opportunity to exercise, or saying that you've managed to accommodate this despite some limitations?
It's unclear

MrMeSeeks
If you can't offer your pet a safe stress-free opportunity to exercise then you probably should consider whether keeping it is in its best interests and whether you're meeting your duty of care under the animal welfare act

Sure, instead of actually enforcing areas that would be stress-free to small pets that do enjoy being walked on a lead in environments suitable to them, it would be better to not keep small pets. Because the only other option is upsetting a great many entitled fuckwit dog owners that don’t believe any rule applies to their pet. So they should be able to continue on as is and everyone has to bow down to that and work around them. Sounds a good approach.

Every environment is going to be different so it's up to individual pet owners to find a suitable safe and appropriate location for exercising their pets.

The point is, unless it’s a dog, there is literally no safe and appropriate locations for exercising a pet. As evidenced by this thread, due to risk of dog attack. They are everywhere including every single location they are prohibited from by law. As per this thread, dogs have the right of way basically due to potential damage they can do. This leaves no safe and suitable locations for any small pet that would be suitable on a lead if it were not for dogs being where they should not be. I’m not just referring to cats. It seems the preferred option is, just don’t keep small pets that would usually like the enrichment of a different environment on a lead, problem solved. That’s fine, I just think it’s a really odd mentality.

interesting feature on 'farming today' on what a farmer considers 'close control'... a dog that's playing 50m away from it's handler is not under close control.

@redcandlelight no, of course it isn’t. You also are supposed to ‘follow the line of the footpath’ , which means if you are on the footpath and your dog is not anywhere near it you are not following the law. Most people have no idea about this or ignore it.

I have never heard that dogs are not allowed in cemeteries. This is certainly not the case in our home town, where it’s a hugely popular place to dog walk. Even though they poop and wee all over the graves. 😒

“Because the only other option is upsetting a great many entitled fuckwit dog owners that don’t believe any rule applies to their pet. So they should be able to continue on as is and everyone has to bow down to that and work around them.”

That’s not what anyone else is saying though, just that you can be a responsible dog owner and get caught out if a small animal is somewhere unexpected that it wouldn’t seem logical to walk them.

I’ve met a ferret out for a walk, it was in a fairly quiet residential area - I literally thought, that small dog is moving funny, oh a ferret, cute!

That was it, because it didn’t strike me as a particularly odd place to have one out, just unusual because you don’t see many.

The cat I saw in the country park was having to deal with walking in the same space as not just dogs, but cyclists, joggers, horses, barbecues and picnics and a children’s play park... it’s busy enough that I avoid it with some dogs, and they’re usually socialised to more things than cats are.

@tabulahrasa Have you read the thread? 😂 That’s exactly what everyone is saying.

[quote Poorlykitten]@tabulahrasa Have you read the thread? 😂 That’s exactly what everyone is saying.[/quote]
I’ve been on the thread the entire time, so yes...

There’s a huge difference between finding somewhere you’d expect not to meet loads of dogs off lead and some eejit doing it anyway and picking somewhere where the world and his wife makes a beeline for.

@redcandlelight

interesting feature on 'farming today' on what a farmer considers 'close control'... a dog that's playing 50m away from it's handler is not under close control.

Quite. It is the sort of situation that can cause cows to attack walkers and their dogs - sometimes fatally - in defence of themselves or especially their calves, and how worried sheep miscarry, get injured or killed. Farmers and game keepers are dog lovers too almost to a man or woman. They really don't want to shoot your dog, but more than that they don't want their stock harassed or worse.

@redcandlelight

interesting feature on 'farming today' on what a farmer considers 'close control'... a dog that's playing 50m away from it's handler is not under close control.

Which is a very different scenario to the one described in the OP.

[quote Poorlykitten]@redcandlelight no, of course it isn’t. You also are supposed to ‘follow the line of the footpath’ , which means if you are on the footpath and your dog is not anywhere near it you are not following the law. Most people have no idea about this or ignore it.[/quote]
This is what annoys me too. The footpath, even across an open field is only a narrow path and therefore if your dog strays from that path it is trespassing.