Opinion: Loose Dogs

I will be touching on this in the Day of Ash this evening, but I wanted to get something out of the way now. It deals with loose dogs.

On my way into work this morning, when I got to the little town we just live outside of, I saw something that really “makes my blood boil”.

Three pit mixes running across the road. It looked like two of them chasing another down to attack, at first, until the one that was downed rolled over and I could see it was a play roll. All three had really nice collars on, and all in good shape.

Now, if I was in Washington state still, I would think someone just accidentally let their dogs loose and are trying to capture them. Of course, then I would realize that thanks to the AR agenda taking hold in Washington, anyone with three pit mixes is.. Never mind, I will go off on a completely different rant here.

As I am in Oklahoma, I have to question if these dogs are let to run loose normally.

When I first thought it was a dog fight, I pulled to the side and honked my horn. All three popped up and came over to the car to see what was up. No fear. No aggression.

If I didn’t have Ash in the car, I would have grabbed the spare leads and loaded them up and figured out what to do from there.

I understand live stock guardian dogs running loose on their land. Generally, those kinds of working dogs know the borders of the property and only cross if what they are guarding has crossed. I am ok with that.

Yet here in Oklahoma, I commonly see mutt dogs that are not live stock guardian dogs running loose. Dogs in good condition, with nice collars, and decent temperaments. I say decent, because I know some of them are dog aggressive, which is where my real issue starts.

What if I was needing to go to a local business before work?

I pull Ash out of the car, go to put his pack on, and get attacked by someone’s loose dog.

This has almost happened to us (my wife and myself) more than once already. Rico when he was a puppy in Olympia Washington was attacked by three strays when I pulled him out of the van to take him into a friends house for socialization. Thankfully, he had that thick coat then as he does now, and he was not injured as I had to literally kick the dogs away.

My disjointed opinion if not realized as of yet is this.

Dogs get loose. I understand this. I have had my own on a very rare occasion get away.

I don’t care what breed it is though. If your dog runs loose normally, and does not understand property boundaries, you the owner are part of the issue.

By letting your dogs run loose with out making sure they stay on your property, you give the AR agenda ammo. You give another negative statistic that makes it so more and more people who never have this issue can’t have a dog.

By letting your dogs run loose, you are putting people in danger.

I have sympathy. Yet, if I see these three loose again, I will be calling Animal Control and sending proof. Even with knowing that it adds yet another mark for AR (Animal Rights) to use. Even knowing that the Animal Control in that area is capture, and kill.

It falls on me if a service dog handler is harmed because of this and I did nothing.

Even now, I worry about this and just hope those dogs ran home after I drove off.

Keep your dogs under control, at all times.

-Z

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