Unlike the “Whisky Blogger Commandments“, this is just a draft (and there are only four guidelines so far); please feel feel free to make suggestions for additions.
1. Do not walk a dog you cannot goddamn control. This category includes dogs whose towing power is greater than your restraining power.
2. Do not especially walk a dog you cannot goddamn control on a goddamned extendable leash.
3. If for some reason you are walking a goddamned dog you cannot goddamn control on a goddamned extendable leash and your dog starts going out of its goddamned mind when it sees other dogs on leashes 100 meters away, do not extend the goddamned leash.
4. Once you have retracted the goddamned leash you for some reason saw fit to extend in this situation, either stop until the other dogs are out of goddamned view or walk away in a different goddamned direction—do not follow the dogs your goddamned dog was going out of its goddamned mind trying to get to. Your dog has not displayed any ability to stop going out of its goddamned mind.
Am I leaving out anything important?
My Annoying Opinions 
Goddamn right on the money
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Don’t come up with goddamned weak excuses (“he’s only being friendly”) when your out of control dog almost knocks my friend’s child over
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Clean up after your dog’s shit while walking your dog – most dog owners haven’t mastered that one, which is why I have utter contempt for most dog owners.
Train your dog (or have someone train you to train your dog). Dogs are looking for leadership; if you’re not smarter than your dog, you shouldn’t have it.
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Don’t have too much contempt for dog owners, Jeff: at least we don’t own cats.
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dogs drool, cats rule
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You are hereby banned from this blog. May you never have anything but Tobermory 10 to drink for the rest of your life.
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That is a punishment worthy of GoT.
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It’s a question of intelligence; most dog owners aren’t even smart enough to know that no one “owns” a cat.
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Yes, that’s the romantic story cat owners love to tell themselves, isn’t it? That their choice of pet reveals their own true untamed self. When in truth all it reveals is that they like to be treated coldly and contemptuously by the creatures they care for.
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No, it’s not what it says about the person, beyond the fact that they know that a cat doesn’t hang around out of emotional dependency like a dog – if you have a cat’s affection, it’s because you’ve earned it, not just because you’re there. On the flipside, a lot of dog people like the almost unconditional reinforcement that their dog gives them (“I must be alright; my dog still likes me”), and the ones with money double down with fancy purebreds, crossbreds, inbreds to take it to the next level (“I must really be something if my expensive oodle-poodle-noodle still likes me”).
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Does the cat give you a biscuit once you’ve earned its affection? Or do you have to learn to do tricks as well to amuse it?
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Interesting post. Obviously something happened.
I have a medium size (60 pounds) mixed breed (half Lab, half Border Collie) dog that I walk off leash most of the time. Most of the areas we walk in are away from roads and sidewalks. My wife and I have spent time working with this dog since he was 3 months old. We are not dog trainers, in fact this is the first dog we have ever owned. He is fairly high energy and loves to run and chase rabbits, and there are thousands of rabbits around here. But he has learned to obey our commands to stop and wait. He will not approach another dog or a person unless he sees that we are okay with it. Generally he ignores other dogs and is only moderately interested in people.
But this is what I think is meant by having a dog that is in control. He knows enough to listen to our voices. It takes a long time and a lot of patience. He is 5 years old and is just amazing now.
But he has been attacked by other dogs that the owners have no control over. I came very close to getting into a fight with a guy whose dog had gone after and bitten my dog on 2 occasions. On the third occasion I yelled and threatened the dog to keep him away. The owner went nuts.
Another owner walking 3 big dogs on a leash had absolutely no strength to stop them when they went after my dog and managed to bite him and open up wounds on his rear end before I got him away. No apology, no comment from the dog owner.
Most dog owners are pretty cool but, like everything else, there sure are a lot of assholes.
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Nothing bad happened. It’s just a minor, ongoing annoyance on our street.
Another ongoing annoyance is people who leave their dogs off-leash in their un-fenced yards while they’re working or hanging out or sometimes entirely unsupervised. There’s one dog in particular who constantly comes running out from a driveway as we walk past. He doesn’t seem aggressive but my dogs, who are on leash, don’t know that and get really frantic when he tries to approach us. I have to yell at him to make him go away. Every other time an owner, who I am yet to see face to face, will call him off. Quite apart from the risk of a fight developing when leashed dogs feel confined and threatened by a strange, unleashed dog that approaches them, there’s the risk of humans, particularly children, getting caught in the middle and getting bitten (or slipping on ice/snow in the winter here), and also of the off-leash dog getting hit by traffic.
So, yes, please don’t walk your dog off-leash in public areas. Your dog may respond to your commands but the sight of another dog running freely close-by can be hard for otherwise well-behaved dogs to endure.
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Old joke that sums up cats and dogs pretty well (and I have both):
A dog looks at you and thinks: “Wow, you give me food, shelter, affection. You must be a god!”
A cat looks at you and thinks: “Wow, you give me food, shelter, affection. I must be a god!”
:).
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