Your dog is not bomb proof

[Trainarmrestfairy]

Trigger Warning - animal death.

For the love of God please stop walking your dog off lead by busy roads or trying to cross busy roads with your dog off lead.

Your dog is not bomb proof.

This morning I watched as a dog I’ve seen every day for pretty much for the last seven years got spooked crossing a road. Before that I’d have described it as bomb proof although I did privately disapprove of it being
off the lead. Walked perfectly to heel. Never left its owners side. Always off lead. Today it spooked crossing the road and was hit by a car. It’s dead.

If it had been on a lead it may be alive. So please put your dogs safety first and put it on a lead when you cross the road. The lead may not have saved its life, but at least the owner may have had some chance of stopping it. Without the lead the poor dog never stood a chance

@BaronessEllarawrosaurus Well in this instance the dog was off lead on a designated road, so it was an offence.

My much-missed greyhound was badly savaged (he did survive and died of unrelated causes years later) by a local husky whose owner inexplicably decided to walk him off the lead up the other side of the road we live on despite multiple incidents of said dog behaving aggressively to others. My poor boy was on the lead having a wee and the dog just hurled himself straight across the road at him. I didn't blame the dog, I blamed the owner. My dog could have been killed and so could his if there had been a car.

I have never in my life walked a dog off the lead along a road and in answer to your point, OP, I would always shorten the lead whilst waiting to cross so I am quite sure that this poor dog could have survived if he'd been on the lead.

I've never heard that term of phrase used in this context before but I totally and utterly agree with you.

Agree - they're independent beings with independent thoughts. If you've got a dog who's never bolted off the lead for the last ten years, all you can be sure of is that so far he hasn't felt he needed to bolt.

Since the op hasn't specified the road or even local authority you can't specify it was a designated road.

Whether it was a designated road or not, (pedantic much?) it was an idiotic thing to do resulting in an unnecessary death.

Completely agree. Some years ago, we were walking our dog along a very wide, very quiet road that led to a big park. On the opposite side (probably having left the park), a woman with an off-lead dog. It saw ours and immediately charged across the road - to be hit by a car right in front of us. We were all distraught, including our dog.

The woman didn't even have a lead with her.

We encountered a couple with a shih tzu recently. It only had 3 legs, so my partner asked what had happened. It was still quite young when they were walking it on an extendable lead, it dived off into the road, got hit by a car and had to have a leg removed.

We noted they were now using a traditional lead...

I completely agree. I regularly see a man walking his three small dogs along a busy main road which has a grass verge to one side. Much of the time they are walking behind him so he doesn't have a clue where they are or what they are doing. It makes me cringe every single time.

I’d consider my dog pretty solid. The local shepherd has not been maintaining the fences so there are sheep on the drive and she is desperate to chase but walks nicely to heel. I take her to town and it’s leads on till we get to the forest walk where there is much less danger.

There are numerous times I’ve seen people walking their dogs on extendable leads next to roads, and the dog wanders into the road.
I had to slow down for exactly this the other day and got glared at by the dog’s owner. Crazy.

Surprised you haven't asked for a grid reference so you can prove your point. 🙄

Totally!! our dog that hates water, jumped into deep water covered in seaweed so it was all green and he thought it was grass. Really scary as it was quite a drop and difficult for us to get him out.

I do agree with this. My dog is almost perfect off lead, comes to heal around other people and dogs, runs about where suitable under direction but always in sight and comes straight back. She's a border collie so keeps a good eye on us. Our daily walk involves crossing one road as we go from one green space to another (long off road path following a small stream) the road isn't busy but is a bus route, with some cars that go that way too. She's always perfectly waited by the side far back from the roadway for me to catch up to get her on lead to cross, then take her back off the other side. So eventually I got lazy and just told her to cross with me. And she always did. Until one day she went halfway then ran back as she saw a pigeon on the grass the side she was coming from. No cars in sight anywhere around luckily and I saw her instantly halt and realise she was now the wrong side of the road from me. Stark reminder for me that as well behaved as she was she's just a bloody animal and it's my job to be responsible, not hers. She's now back on the lead every day to cross. I'll not chance that luck again.

Hard agree. I live in a high dog ownership suburb and there are so many people (my silly son included) who allow dogs off lead on the way from their house to the park and home again. We have long driveways and people don’t look if there are kids on scooters let alone dogs crossing the end of their drives. Just a matter of time really and yes, it’s usually men doing it or lazy teens like mine.

This happened to me just the other day, dog off lead in busy high street and just ran out in front of me, thank god I saw it coming and was able to stop, I would’ve been devastated if I’d hit it.

It's also illegal to not have your dog on a lead on a public road.

This isn't true in England at least. Should not must is the highway code.

I agree though -leads on roads no matter how well trained

@Newfluff road traffic act 1988. It’s against the law to have a dog off lead on a designated road.