March 31, 2011
To the Editor:
There are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners.
Stephan Wilkinson had commented that restraining a dog may mean that the owner controls the dog’s behavior with voice command. This is, as they say, a sticky wicket.
Last year my good friend and I were walking up the path from the Pillars on Mountain Road. We had three dogs with us, all leashed. On our way we were approached by a woman walking a rather large, boisterous pup, off leash, and my friend called out to her, “Please leash your dog.” The woman replied along the lines of, “oh, he’s fine, he’s just a puppy.”
Her dog approached ours, bounded all around, in and out of our leashed dogs and, as we continued on our way, this large puppy continued to follow us, bounding in and out, up and down, and in the midst of our little troop, as we tried to shoo him off and continue our walk. Meanwhile, this imbecile woman kept walking and calling her dog, who continued to follow us for quite some time.
At one point she yelled for us to stop and wait, and we figured, why? She was the one that chose to let her dog loose, we were not there to babysit her untrained dog, and she should have had the sense to properly restrain her animal when we first approached, as we had specifically requested. We were subjected to her dog’s annoying and bothersome behavior because she thought she had him under voice command.
Err on the side of caution. I don’t care how well you think your dog is trained, when other people or dogs are present your dog should be on a leash.
Kate Benson
Cornwall-on-Hudson
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