“Dogs, Roads and Children”

A couple of weeks ago I jumped in the car and set off for town. Only a couple of hundred yards from my house the road bears round on a ninety degree corner. Just before I got to the corner I saw 2 young girls walking 3 dogs between them. They were going in the same direction as me and were on the left hand pavement (sidewalk). One of them looked about 11 or 12 and was walking 2 labradors. The other girl looked about 9 or 10 and was walking a springer spaniel.

When I first noticed them it was immediately obvious the girls were finding the dogs a bit of a handful - although all three were on leads they were pulling here and there, getting all tangled up etc.

As soon as I'd driven round the corner I spotted obvious trouble. On the right hand pavement walking towards me was a lady walking her dog, also on a lead. You didn't have to be a genius to guess what was about to happen.

If all three of the dogs being walked by the girls were well enough trained to ignore other dogs then nothing was going to happen. But if - as seemd fairly likely - even one of those three dogs would not ignore the other one, then as the 2 sets of dog walkers came into the corner and became visible to each other there was likely to be trouble. And that was the moment when I hoped no other cars would be coming.

As I carried on driving I looked in my rear view mirror. And what I saw made me so relieved there weren't any cars about.

The springer suddenly ran out into the road, lead trailing. Whether the young girl walking it had simply found it too strong to hold onto and had had the lead jerked from her hand I don't know. She might of course have had the sense to realise that, not wanting to be pulled out into the road right on a blind corner, her safest option was simply to drop the lead if she felt herself being dragged.

A second or so after the springer the girl with the labs was most definitely dragged into the road. I could clearly see her trying to hang onto them, but they were simply too strong for her and she was pulled right across the road as her two made a beeline for the dog on the opposite side being walked by the lady.

I was driving away by this point and didn't see the outcome but I'm assuming that, apart from perhaps a sore shoulder where the dogs had yanked hard, neither of the girls and none of the dogs were any the worse for wear. (I should have added that none of the dogs with the girls looked aggressive - I don't think from their body language that they were hell bent on attacking the other dog. They just looked like they were excited and wanted to race over to say hello.)

I think it's a wonderful thing for children to grow up with dogs and for those who don't I see no harm in them walking other people's dogs. In fact that's how I was as a boy. We didn't have dogs in my family so I had a 'dog walking round' and walked 3 or 4 different people's dogs who lived in my village.

With all that said I think you have to exercise a great deal of caution when it comes to letting children walk dogs. So much depends on the individual dog and how well behaved it is. Also a lot depends on the age of the child, its physical strength and natural level of 'dog sense'.

Quite clearly the girls I saw were having trouble controlling the dogs even without any distractions around. To my mind that alone is sufficient reason to say that they ought not to be walking them on their own without an adult on hand to help if needed. What happened when they rounded the corner could so easily have ended in tragedy if a car had been coming at the time. It could quite realistically have meant serious injury or even death for one or more of the dogs, girls or driver of the car.

If you let children, either your own or somebody else's, walk your dog, please make absolutely certain the children are capable of handling the dog safely.

Only a day or so later I saw another incident with a dog in the road that made me wince.

I was in the car on the way home from picking up my daughter and her friend from school. We'd just dropped off the friend and were driving away from her house. A woman who was parked a little way up the road got out of her car and opened the back door. A dog shot out and ran straight across the road right in front of my car. Luckily because I was only just moving off from having dropped off my daughter's friend I was still only going relatively slowly and was easily able to brake and avoid problems. But if I'd been driving along at 30mph or more it would have been a different story. How stupid of the woman to open the door directly in front of me - presumably she knew full well her dog wouldn't wait until it was told to get out.

Why is it that so few people bother to train their dogs to be well behaved around the car? Cars play such an important part in most people's lives now and yet most people seem to make very little effort to teach the dog basic obedience when it comes to getting in and out of them.

If you'll just teach the dog to wait until it's told before it gets into or out of the car you can avoid any possibility of the dog running into the path of an oncoming vehicle. If you want to see an example of what I mean one of the videos on my site at www.dogtrainingblueprint.com/secrete.html shows me demonstrating it with Zorro.

Recommended reading - "Dog Training Blueprint To Success".

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