Dog thefts

[Floralnomad]

This just popped up on FB and I thought it was very well written and worth sharing

They also can get harassed by members of the public and become a bite risk. I stepped in once to stop a young girl from cuddling a very scared dog outside a shop.

A tied up dog is a stressed dog (in general) so much more likely to react.

It's currently 6 dogs a day that get stolen . I think that's quite shocking .

I live quite near a local Tesco , chemist etc and there are literally always dogs tied up outside , utter madness .

Considering that there are 12 million dogs in the UK and 2000-3000 dogs get reported stolen every year, your chance to have your dog stolen is 1/60,000. As a comparison 80,000 dogs are killed on the roads every year (chance 1:150 that your dog will die by/in a car) and 10,000 suffer severely from a tick bite (1:1200). While I agree that I wouldn't leave my dog in a dodgy place in front of a shop for a long time, and also that the consequences (not knowing where your dog is) are horrific, there is a lot of hysteria going on about dog theft IMO. If you leave your dog outside a shop briefly in a nice area where you can check on him through the windows etc. is likely not going to lead to them being stolen, and the benefits of popping to the grocer quickly on the way back from your walk rather than doing an extra trip (especially by car) are enormous.

Well, precisely.
I used to leave our dog tied up opposite the bakers (when we had a local bakers). I could see her through the window, it wasn't busy, I knew a fair proportion of the passers-by anyway, and anyone trying to take her would have had to take the slip lead off her neck, got her to wait, got the slip lead off the lamp post and got it back on her. My eyes would literally be off her for no more than 10 seconds at a stretch. No one was going to get the lead untangled in that time. They'd have been struggling to stop, fuss her and get a penknife out.

It's a case of knowing the dog and the area and keeping an eye. I wouldn't leave one of my current dogs tied up as I doubt she'd actually bite, but she's nervous enough of strangers to air-snap.

People do leave dogs tied up outside shops where they can't see them, and that is riskier, but in a small community where a lot of people know the dog that risk is mitigated.