Impacts Of Off Leash Dogs

In general, all my dogs have always been good with other dogs. Not necessarily people, but other dogs. I never thought much about off leash dogs and their ignorant owners. Until I got Spree. Spree was worked with daily since a puppy on how to be neutral around other dogs/people. I knew I wanted her this way because I planned on doing dog sports with her and she would be exposed to those types of stimulus in those situations. One nice early summer Sunday afternoon, we were on our walk around our neighborhood. We took our usual route and everything was just dandy. This lovely summer day had brought many people to work outside in the garden or out by their pools catching the first tan of the summer.

Spree had great foundations. I cannot emphasize enough how great and proud I was of her and myself for doing all this work. No prong, no choke, no harness even! She was trained on a flat collar and it worked for us. We passed a house that had their dog pacing and barking in the front yard (most likely an invisible fence kept that dog in their yard). Spree seemed a bit more worried about this than I had expected. I decided to use “1,2,3” (Leslie McDevitt Pattern Game) to get her past the dog and gain distance. It worked great and we continued on for about 3 more houses and then we heard more barking. Lots of barking, it was obvious that it was more than one dog and by the tone of the barks it was quite upsetting for Spree. I spotted the 2 gremlins in the front porch of their home, barking and jumping and even some redirection of frustration on eachother. The next thing I see, as we are passing by this house, is the 2 dogs running full speed through their yard to the street where Spree and I were walking.. My heart sank. Spree was already in flight mode, as she was pulling hard on the leash to get away from the dogs. These two dogs ran right to Spree. They both lunged at her, circling her, baring their teeth at her, barking at her…it was awful. I look around and begin to yell to anyone who could hear me. No owner that I could see. Then I am about to drop the leash because I have NO idea what I can do next and I see Spree pull herself out of her collar. Spree is fast. Much faster than 2 french bulldogs, but she was so scared and was not prepared on what to do. I mean really, how many people are? Spree ran across the street  to the side yard of a home and turned to look back. She gained enough distance from the dogs.Now at this point, a lady comes out of the home where the 2 dogs were and casually trots to her dogs while screaming at them. The dogs ran from the owner and ran towards Spree. Full disclosure, I had lots of words for this lady. Not nice words. Every bad word I could think of I yelled at this woman because now my dog is running down the street, scared with no collar and absolutely not responding to me. Both of her dogs were breathing so heavy now and one was laying in the grass catching its breath. The lady doesn’t even apologize for her dogs. Nothing. Of course this makes me more angry so as I am running down the street to find my dog, I make sure to tell her this is all her fault. I am running (and I am not at all a runner) to find Spree before a car hits her or another dog comes at her. I am basically in tears looking and calling out to her while trying to breath from the intense running. Neighbors had noticed all this commotion and started to come by the street to see what was going on. Spree was like a deer bolting past everyone. Finally, I reach my street and a neighbor is watching Spree from across the street to make sure she didn’t run away from our front yard now. When the dogs charged Spree, we were about a mile from our house and Spree ran straight home. When Spree finally spotted me approaching her, all her hackles went up and I could hear a low growl as she backed away from me. I just dropped to my knees and called her name as sweetly as I could and Spree came running to me. She was actually shaking, I was shaking. And I had failed. I failed my best friend. 

We went inside and of course the rest of the day I spoiled the crap out of her and tried to make her day better. 

We did not go out on a walk the next day. I waited 2 days until we walked again, but guess what? I couldn’t walk her far from our house. I was so scared of a dog charging Spree again that I wanted to be close to our house. Spree was definitely hypervigilant on her walks for about 1 week  after the incident, but I thought we got past most of the worry. Then we went to the park. A new park. There was a dog (this dog didn’t care about Spree) about 150 yards away. There were no other dogs or people in sight. Spree spotted the dog and instantly began to pace on leash. She couldn't find it, she couldn't look at me, she couldn’t even play with the tug! At that moment, I had realized the damage that had been done to her from those 2 off leash dogs. I started to cry. I got her to my vehicle and she jumped in before the door was all the way open. All the hard work we did together I felt went down the drain.

I never did get an apologize from the lady with the off leash dogs. Many other people from the neighborhood came by to make sure Spree was okay. Maybe that is what infuriated me more than putting in all the hard work. I was so angry at the lack of empathy. I kept thinking to myself how awful I would feel if my dog(s) charged another dog. Why wasn’t this lady the same way? 

Maybe people don’t understand the way dog savvy people understand. This lady probably had no idea of the impact that all that chaos had done to my dog (and myself). What if those dogs were friendly and wanted to run towards Spree to initiate play? Well that did happen not too long ago. One older happy go lucky lab (off leash) with his two older owners, saw Spree and myself at a park. I am sure that dog only wanted to say hi or whatever, but Spree wanted nothing to do with that dog. The owners had zero recall on the dog and the dog kept coming towards us. I obviously was moving Spree in the opposite direction, but she was scared. She growled and barked at this dog. Thankfully, the dog never got within 15 feet of us. He stopped when he heard the growl and bark from Spree. However, his owners never came towards him to get him. They stood in the same spot while this all happened. I was livid. They had even stopped calling the dog to come. I don’t think there is any reason for an owner to just sit back and watch their dog approach a visually distressed dog. Maybe the owners were not able to walk in the grass to their dog? I don’t know, but either way, the dog should have been leashed. Yes, the dog seemed friendly, but my dog is terrified of the dog.

I am absolulty not against people being off leash with their dog. I think it is great if it is done right. Have your dog off leash in areas where other dogs may not be. Have your dog know a reliable recall. Have your dog know to not approach strange dogs while on leash. There are many elements that people do not factor in and then those are the people that get all upset when their dog approaches a fearful dog that keeps trying to gain distance from their dog. People’s egos get hurt and then they put those emotions on their dog. Now instead of having a dog to train to just be neutral with other dogs, I have started a whole behavioral modification process. Trust me it is the last thing I want to be working on with my own dog, but impacts of dogs charging Spree are too great to ignore. Thankfully, Spree will be okay with time and B Mod. I just had other plans of things to be working on at this point…life never goes as planned. Ha!