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Interesting that livestock is the primary concern—I'd imagine interactions with other dogs (which can be highly stressful, though this varies a lot from dog to dog) would be the primary issue these days.
Livestock haven't gone away.
I would just like to comment that if you love animals, you should hate pets. The amount of animal factory farming (killing of animals often more intelligent than your canine) required to nourish a domesticated animal over the course of their lives is gross in all senses of the word gross.
I am not for pet owner ship as a broad concept because of this feeding pattern but there is that issue of once they are here - then what? So long as we can get their numbers down then that is a good start. At the moment we are in a predicament, with a solution a while off.
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> "My dog is off leash because I want them to have freedom" is a profoundly selfish decision if you're in a place to encounter other dogs. This is cultural, I think. In the UK at least it’s often the norm for dogs to be off leash in open areas like commons (public land, usually grassy or wooded, or a mix of the two), or in other settings where they’re away from roads and won’t encounter livestock. On public footpaths…
Interesting that livestock is the primary concern—I'd imagine interactions with other dogs (which can be highly stressful, though this varies a lot from dog to dog) would be the primary issue these days.
Dogs encounter eachother all the time when you're out on a walk and it's... fine (again, I'm talking UK here). What's the worst thing that happens that you're all paranoid about your dog meeting, gasp, the horror... another dog?
This makes no sense to me.
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Mate, if ever there was someone who needed to spend an hour rolling around with a bunch of puppies, it's you. (= I hope you can at least understand that pets bring joy into the lives of their owners. It doesn't all have to make perfect sense. In the grand scheme of things, we're all just temporary cosmic dust, right? And dogs are a great daily reminder to focus on the small moments of happiness whenever you can find…
This response to the point made by the person to whom you're responding is the philosophical equivalent of plugging your ears and going "la la la can't hear you". > In the grand scheme of things, we're all just temporary cosmic dust, right? What else would you be able to justify using this platitude?
Have you been reading Earthly Ed's books? ;)
Yeah, that justification taken to its extremes goes down a VERY dark path.
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> "My dog is off leash because I want them to have freedom" is a profoundly selfish decision if you're in a place to encounter other dogs. This is cultural, I think. In the UK at least it’s often the norm for dogs to be off leash in open areas like commons (public land, usually grassy or wooded, or a mix of the two), or in other settings where they’re away from roads and won’t encounter livestock. On public footpaths…
this video corroborates your cultural hypothesis https://youtu.be/3GRSbr0EYYU?si=Q15kFkFBE-aW2ail
[0] To the point where we briefly considered naming a dog Fenton, but then realised the humour would wear off pretty quickly and it wouldn't really be fair on the dog.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes#Philosophy :
> asked why he was called a dog [Diogenes] replied, "I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals."
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> The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. This claim is interesting, if true. Can you back it up? I spent 15 minutes on research, and my preliminary findings, using US statistics (I'm not American but it's just easier to google American stuff) suggest that: a) about 42 Americans die to dog attacks per year (about 0.13 per 100k population) (very high confidence) b) it looks lik…
I'm not the other guy, and I don't have data, but the risk might be far higher outside the US. These days, Americans mostly treat their dog like a family member. If you travel to developing nations, you're far more likely to run into packs of dogs roaming around. Packs of dogs will do things that a solo dog might never consider. It still happens in developed countries, but it's far more common these days to see it in…
But the comment I was responding to was from a commenter whose bio says they're in Philidelphia, responding to a comment that I think was probably pretty developed-country, on a story from a Brit living in America. So I think we're talking about the developed-country context.
I'm not disagreeing with the text of what you wrote, though.
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> The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. This claim is interesting, if true. Can you back it up? I spent 15 minutes on research, and my preliminary findings, using US statistics (I'm not American but it's just easier to google American stuff) suggest that: a) about 42 Americans die to dog attacks per year (about 0.13 per 100k population) (very high confidence) b) it looks lik…
Injuries are way more common than death. [edit] Forbes: an estimated 800,000 people each year must seek medical attention after a bite. Hospital bills can be very expensive, and an ER visit could necessitate a dog bite lawsuit in order to recover monetary compensation for damages. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dog-attack-statistics-b... My sister in law was one of them, when she was five or so. Unprovoked run-…
Yeah, the injury stats are way higher than death. I just couldn't find a fast way to disambiguate serious injuries from not-so-serious-but-we-still-care injuries from the sort of bite that really just merits a fake apology and everyone gets on with their lives.
At the other extreme, I've had first-hand knowledge of a case where someone taunted a dog repeatedly over many months (stupid kid, stupid dog-owners, lots of mistakes were made), eventually the kid got bit, didn't even need stitches, but they called animal control.
So. Non-fatal dog-attacks have a very wide range of impact, and I had no idea how to disentangle those.
Oh, after all that writing I just did, I went back and re-read your source. In 2022 there were 17,500 home insurance claims related to dog bites, at an average cost of $64k. That sounds like a pretty reasonable proxy for serious injury due to injuries from dog bites from pets, the sort of pets that could plausibly have been inappropriately not-on-leash (remember we're discussing whether or not it's "incredibly dangerous and irresponsible" to ever have your dog unrestrained).