My 3yo dog Lily is half husky, half border collie and various other herding breeds. She has heterochromia, a common mutation in huskies, resulting in one brown and one blue eye. It’s quite charming. Despite the seemingly energetic nature of her breed(s), she’s surprisingly chill. Well, provided she gets her morning walk. She let’s me know when that cortisol starts to spike with the same husky whine she uses around dinnertime. Walks are generally around our neighborhood, on the paths above the ocean, or in the surrounding forest. We put on a lot of mileage as we both love a good walk.
At the spots we frequent the most I would approximate that 97% of dogs are leashed. I think that a leash is part of the domestication agreement between humans and dogs, and they are really quite fine about it and have been for a good long while. But, not all owners agree with this. I see this as a rather benevolent misunderstanding of the relationship between human and canine. I do my best to deal with it quietly (most of the time) despite the problems it creates for those sharing the path with them.
Leaving a dog unleashed exports responsibility to others. An unleashed dog distributes uncertainty to everyone around them. As the dog approaches we must ask: “Is this dog friendly?”; “Is my dog safe?”; “Should I pick up my child?”, “Am I at risk of getting bitten?”; “Will this dog pee on my leg?” (I’ve actually witnessed this). It also has a notable effect on the other dogs around it that are on leash. For our last dog, Molly, this typically led to barking and negative reactivity. Lily is more diminutive by nature and gets noticeably uncomfortable and anxious. Nothing is more awkward than walking her on a single track trail with an unleashed dog following right behind, but we will get to that shortly.
This exportation of responsibility reminds me a lot of the difference between being frugal vs. being cheap. The frugal person accepts some inconvenience to reduce cost or waste, e.g. DIY’ing the labor for a fence and asking the neighbor to pay for material. The cheap person reduces their own costs by increasing someone else’s, e.g. refusing to split the cost or labor of a fence with a neighbor. On the one hand, the leashed dog can be a bit of a hindrance to walking freely. On the other hand, the unleashed dog frees up some physical bandwidth for the person walking it. But, in the second case, everyone else has to deal with the ‘costs’ of that free roaming dog.
I’ve had several notable experiences with unleashed dogs. Below are three notable examples.
Dog Hell Camping Trip
The first was on a camping trip with old friends from college. We met at a lake in the middle of California and everyone decided to bring their dog; a decision later regretted. We often refer to it as the “Dog Hell Camping Trip”. The pack included: my old dog Molly, who was friendly but reactive with certain dogs; a borderline aggressive lab mix; and one small, very yippy dog, that barked at all things. There was also one small dog, also a Molly, who was quiet all weekend. I think she was scared.
We did our best to keep the dogs happy, including keeping them on leash at all times, mostly separated, and taking them on solitary walks around the campground. It was manageable but volatile. Then… Maddie showed up.
Maddie was, not kidding here, an internet famous dog handled by a friend of a friend who paraded her about Instagram and even featured her in several books. She was a seemingly nice dog with a strange habit of standing on things, and per her owner’s insistence, was constantly unrestrained. Leashes were verboten according to his dogma (all pun intended). I think he genuinely believed domesticated dogs are meant to roam free just like their distant ancestors. But I think he failed to notice the costs of his canine philosophy. The poops were numerous and as free ranging as the dog. The other dogs were on edge as Maddie flitted about the campsite unfettered. The barking was non-stop. I finally broke down my tent and went home after a scuffle broke out and Molly got a puncture wound in the chest from Maddie’s nail. It took a while for my blood pressure to return to normal.
The Bell
One of the local redwood trails I walk seems to have a lot more unleashed dogs than any of the others we frequent. Most of these dogs are followed closely by their owners and seem pretty well behaved off leash.
While walking down this quiet and serene creek trail with Lily recently, we were both shaken out of our meditative walk by an unfamiliar sound. I thought it was some sort of strange bird or injured animal; it was ringy and kind of chirpy, and oddly repetitive. It also seemed vastly out of place and foreign to these woods. We stopped, listening intently as the sound started to intensify and get closer.
Lily and I stood there perplexed, when we noticed something moving quickly towards us! Sprinting our way at full clip was a large German Shephard wearing one of those tactical vest type harnesses. I could just make out something around its neck as I braced for impact; there was the source of the strange sound! Hanging off its collar was a medium sized brass bell, ringing with each stride of his gait. I surmised later it was so his owners would be able to keep track of him from a distance on their walk. Luckily, he was not charging to attack, but was enjoying a solo run along the single track when he found us in the path. He was friendly, but, how was I to know his intentions as he barreled at us? The situation was entirely uncertain until he slowed down and greeted us and even then, I didn’t feel entirely confident with this lone dog and absent owners.
We walked awkwardly along the trail with the German shepherd tagging closely behind. Lily looking concerned as she checked behind her every few seconds to see if he was coming in again for a another butt sniff. I only heard his owners from a distance after we’d finally made it up an incline and he’d relented in wait for them; too far away to discuss my thoughts about their bell technology and the scare we’d had. Again, I think their intentions were anything but nefarious, but just not entirely thoughtful of the effect their Dog With The Bell would have on others sharing the trail.
Between a Rock and a Motorcycle
Most of my experiences with off leash dogs have been pretty harmless. Although Molly did get shanked by an internet dog, so I suppose not entirely harmless. But, there was one time that was much more harrowing than the others.
Molly and I were walking in our neighborhood. There’s a house nearby that has a pretty impressive collection of stuff out front. That day, there was a motorcycle parked in the sidewalk and a truck parked across the driveway blocking the path. As we approached, my spidey senses told me to go around in the street, but for some reason I ignored it.
We scooched around the motorcycle and were about to go around the truck when I heard that unmistakable sound.
The front door was left wide open and three big dogs came charging out. I’d made the mistake of using Molly’s training leash that day, the kind that tightens around their neck when you pull. So as I was trying to pull her out of this ambush, it constricted her airway. Molly and I did our best to fend them off, I yelling and trying to kick anything not Molly, her doing her best dog Kung Fu. I pulled and pulled trying to at least get us out of the chokepoint between motorcycle and truck where there was more space and perhaps an easier escape. Fortunately, the owner came running out hollering at her dogs to back off. They finally retreated as I pulled Molly down the street. We were both pretty scratched up, albeit no major wounds or bites, and Molly was in bad shape from lack of oxygen. I picked her up and ran down the street to put some space between us and the big dogs. She came round thankfully. We were closer than ever after that; I referred to her as my ride-or-die for years. And yeah, I threw away the training leash.
Lily Unleashed
While I was writing this, the tables turned. My wife was out getting something from her car and left the front door open. Our neighbor Benny’s cat was in our driveway. Lily saw it from the front threshold and instinctually bolted out at full tilt. She chased the cat across the street and back to its house. Benny is quite frail and in poor health; and was, of course, standing right there as the scene unfolded. My wife yelled “Lily get back here!” and she came bounding back, straight to her crate as she does when we use the bad-dog-tone. He angrily yelled “Keep a leash on that dog, ya hear!”. She retorted “Your cat was in OUR yard!”. I have had a good relationship with him over the years, but he’s often been less than respectful with his tone and comments to my wife. A different generation, perhaps.
There was a light knock on the door a little later. It was Benny. He had ridden his mobility scooter over, climbed the front steps, and rung our bell. Quite a journey for someone in his state. I took a deep breath as I opened the door and felt my heartrate increase. “Dang it, body, there’s no need for that right now” I told myself. Denny was there, hunched over, holding onto the doorframe to maintain his balance. He looked upset when he told me “your dog chased my cat”. I think his world has gotten a lot smaller recently. I noticed my shaky voice as I responded.
Conflict has never been my strong suit, and I’m working on how to approach it with self awareness and an even keel. The first thoughts that ran through my head were defensive: his cat shits in our garden, he backed into our fence and I repaired it without asking for money, we’ve exchanged tools and project ideas, I even once helped him get from a taxi to his living room when he came home after a long day at the bar. And on and on. But, now was not the time for that. I tried to relax my defensive posture with a deep breath. I was the one with the unleashed dog this time, accident or not.
I thought I was going to conclude by simply talking about the exportation of responsibility. That’s a sensible direction to take this and a conclusion I still see as relevant in many of these cases. When you take the leash off a dog, when you leave a door open, you leave open a degree of uncertainty for everyone else. But, can we always be so vigilant? And can we always be in control of the beings in our life? I think the answer is no. We do our best. I think most of us make our best efforts to carry a philosophy that guides our lives in a positive direction and doesn’t impact others negatively. But, it’s always kind of an approximation. I think Maddie’s owner genuinely thought that leaving her unleashed was what was best for a dog’s soul and the bell dog’s owners thought it was a swell idea so there dog could get some exercise while they enjoyed the forest. Both caused some chaos at worst, and uncertainty at best. But, I certainly don’t think it came from a place of disrespect, or even an explicit idea of exporting responsibility. It was just the best guess of what controls were needed to keep things glued together.
I was surprised how off kilter I felt after the interaction with Denny, it took me a couple of hours to return to center. I thought about it a lot that day. I’ve been trying to keep this opinion about unleashed dogs away from moral judgement territory, especially as it’s about such a worldly, almost trivial, matter. But, that was buried in me, despite my attempts to exclude it. And that event acted as a counterforce and made me see my own fallibility more clearly. Also, it reminded me of the inversion of perspectives: how we often jump to conclusions about other people’s intentions without pause.
I’ve decided not to change the upstream writing in this essay. There’s some subtle contradictions that I think need to be captured to show the fallibility of a thought. The impermanence of thought too, perhaps. I’m noticing that a lot in everything, the way things stray from concreteness.
I’ve asked myself a lot this recently: “Where to go from here? What’s next?”. It’s another one of those things where I simply accept carrying uncertainty. I still think owners should leash their dogs and make sure their doors are shut. But, I’m just as fallible as they are and will undoubtedly export responsibility to someone else in the future.