@ErrolTheDragon
If you've got an elderly short legged dog who is much more likely to trip over a static lead than try to bolt, a retractable works well.
I probably wouldn't want one on a big strong dog.
I’ve used them with large dogs, I’ve never had an issue tbh. I prefer them for certain things.
The only safety issue that doesn’t apply to a longline if you use a tape one is that they are a bit harsher on your hands if you ever had an emergency and had to grab it because they’re slightly stiffer material, but a longline in the same sort of situation isn’t exactly pleasant either.
They’re not as good for recall training because you can’t go up a length when you want to give them more freedom and they’re a pain if you want them not taut at a long length... so for that I use a longline.
But... the pros are they’re much faster and easier to reel in a dog when you need to than a longline and there’s no excess lead to deal with, if they break it’s more likely to be the locking mechanism that fails than anything else, so you still have the dog (albeit awkwardly), when a longline breaks on me, there’s a loose dog...
I tend to use them if a dog has a fairly good level of basic training, but has another issue that means they can’t be offlead and a longline isn’t secure enough, so for example my rottie who was dog reactive and had a threshold distance of a football pitch so a longline gave him too much leeway to spot dogs and get them, or a collie I fostered who was very sweet and well behaved but had some obsessive behaviours that meant sometimes you had to just have him quickly.... too quickly to use a longline.
My current dog I don’t use one with, I don’t need to, he’s either on a short lead, off or at the moment sometimes on a longline because he’s a teenager and his recall has gone a bit.