Walking Your Dog Off-Leash - Question.

In light of Dreeza's thread about walking a dog off-leash in a nieghborhood, I have a question to those who do.


When walking your dog, off leash, in a neighborhood (whether a highly populated area or with just a few houses) is your dog allowed to walk anywhere it likes or does the dog have to stay beside you, like on a leash?

heck no...going anywhere you want is running loose. Heeling off leash, is shoulders even with your knee. ALways. IT took two years of leash training and one summer of working off leash to reach this point with Victor. I would never have started until he was a hundred percent at LEAVE IT and a hundred percent in recall as well. FIrst we drug the leash, so i could step on it if he started to get ahead, i won't go into the whole training process but it is very involved. Off leash heeling is a dog that is very well trained and is as in control with or without a lead. WE didn't even attempt starting this training until after he had passed his pets for life test. ANd that wasn't easy, he had to learn not to startle in anyway. NOt even when they dropped a big metal salad bowl on the tile floor right behind him.

Kona is allowed both. If we are near the main road, she is to stay by me... but if we are at the end of the cul-de-sac (where my apartment is), she is allowed to roam a little. She normally sniffs and walks close-by, but once we hit "the trees" (the only place in my community that has trees) she knows to walk with her shoulders even with my knee, as smkie said. Not three feet away, not 2... she has to be close enough so I can grab her if need be, but not where she is tripping me.

Why would you have a dog off leash near a main road?

No. If I have a dog near ANY street, they're to be by my side, whether on leash or off. Frankly I have a fear of busy roads and don't walk dogs near them if I can avoid it. Eve being a service dog, has to deal with it sometimes but she's always leashed while working.

We can trust Herschel to heel off-leash. If he sees a rabbit, he's easily called off. We still don't do it very often, though.

Nala on the other hand...haha. Yeah right.

Lily always gets walked ON LEASH ANYWHERE around cars, roads ect. We rarely walk around the city. If we are in the mountains she is off leash and allowed to wander as long as she stays where I can see her. She has excellent recall, so if she does get out of sight, her name will be called and she comes running back. She is usualy a foot behind me or wandering around sniffing... the only time she gets leashed is when were in the neighborhood or city. She stays by my side or behind my ON leash.

EDIT- I like to veiw off leash hikes as HER freetime so she can do whatever. Onleash is MY time and she needs to obey. Even off leash she has to obey, but she has a little more freedom...

Unlike other people's dogs (not naming names, so no offense everyone ), my dog is reliable whenever she is off leash. I do not mind letting her stay that way-- as long as she doesn't get the notion that chasing vehicles is ok.

Ditto Grace.
And I don't walk my dogs off leash near a road. When they're walking off leash we're on the trails of private property and acreage. If something comes along I call them to come to my side in a sit or down stay.
Millie walks by roads when she is working but for that she is never unleashed.

I very very rarely walk either of my dogs without a leash in residential areas, even though their recall is 100%. The leash laws where I live are pretty strict, and I know people can panic seeing an off-leash dog...

If I'm on my friends' properties, or up at the lake, then they're fine without a leash. But otherwise...

-Rosefern

I don't walk Dance off leash on sidewalks/residential areas. Only in fields. And even then, she has to stay near me and can't be wandering off bothering other people and/or dogs. She's good at that though as she's leary of strangers and doesn't want to go far from me anyway.

I hate it when people in my neighbour walk their dogs off leash, let them roam all over the place, and run up to people.

My dogs don't get walked offleash unless we are in a fenced in area... the dog park, baseball diamond, etc..

Side note, though: When we come home from going somewhere, Mit opens the door and Banzai always, always (this is our ritual!) runs out to greet me, pees in the ivy and then comes in. LOL. That's about as offleash as he gets in our negihborhood.

Ohh wait! The dog park is on the outside of a huge grass area and kid park. After running Buddy inside the dog park, I take him to the grass area if there are no kids around and we work on obedience. Mostly we're working on extended stays (30 seconds so far, whoot!). But other than that, Buddy and Bella are NEVER allowed offleash anywhere.

No, she is to heal at all times while walking through the neighborhood. The field is about 100 meters down the road and there arn't any cars so we let her walk next to us without the leash. We don't have a leash law though.

This is such a **** touchy subject for me.
I have such a usual hatred of owners of off leash dogs. I have a hard time trusting that people have 100% control of their dogs. ESPECIALLY when my dog is sending TONS of daring, nasty, dog aggressive signals in the off leash dog's direction.
Like I said in...er...crap, I cannot remember her name, but the one thread with the dog that charges people and the family refuses to leash the dog (sorry, I cannot remember who it is), anyway, I have nightmares of off leash dogs charging us. It's bad.

I rarely let Gunnar off leash around town. Sometimes on the way back from playing ball at the school I let him stay off lead, but only at certain times of the day. I'll usually let him drag the leash the last block to the house on a regular walk. He's got a good recall but he's also got a high prey drive and there are a lot of stray cats around. If he saw one 50 yards away he might take off after it and come back but if he got half way there, that's too far away, for his own safety. Plus, in general, people aren't real keen on a GSD not on a leash.

Daisy, no way can she be trusted off lead yet.

Bruzer would probably never need a leash, he always walks right beside you, but we put one on him when all of them come for a walk.

Being off lead isn't that important to me right now. We do plenty of off lead stuff during training sessions, in the safety of large fenced pastures so it's not like they don't get a chance to work that way.

Why is risking your dog's life worth walking them off-leash near ANY street?

I just don't get it. I think it must be pretentiousness... or vanity... or, I dunno. It never ceases to amaze me, even though I see dogs being walked off leash every day. I'm just curious of any reason not to leash your dog. (This obviously excludes exercising them in a secure area...)

I never walk Lizzie off lead near any road and aviod roads if possible. I can't understand those who would want to do that (I have neighbors who do this) and the dog comes when called but still?

Thanks for all the replies guys...it's nice to see everyone's answers.

Once in a while I'll let Abbey go off leash but that's usually when we're crossing the road and heading for one of the pastures. She's good about staying close by (unlike the boys who want to go off hunting rabbits). The boys are only off leash when we're walking on the neighbor's fenced property and while they like to nose around, they always come back to see where I am (especially if I've stopped to take pictures of something). Holly is staying on leash longer, even on the fenced property, because she's almost completely deaf now. Ever tried calling a deaf dog? It ain't easy. And for an old dog, she still runs faster than me...

Trick is rarely on a leash. None of my shepherds throughout the years have had to be on-leash much. There's a really special bond you build with a dog that you can trust off-leash. It has nothing to do with vanity or any of that other nonsense - it has to do with knowing and understanding and having a trust/communication between you and your dog. Some dogs are easier to build this with than others. I've already started Tazer on off-leash work and she's doing really well even though she's just six months old.

I don't walk my dogs along roads very often but Trick doesn't need to be leashed. I don't expect her to heel, but I expect her to stay near me and she does. When we get to areas where there are some woods or an area where she can run, I'll tell her "okay!" and then she can run ahead of me and find a stick if she wants. I don't have any problems with her going after other dogs or moose or ever even considering chasing a car. She's going on 12 years old and we've been doing this pretty much all her life.

I often work my dogs outside of a busy store. After taking things out to my van with the shopping cart, I almost always take a dog back to the store entrance with me while I return the cart. Trick does it off-leash. I leave her on a stay and I take the cart inside. This past summer I started taking Khana with me when I return the cart and she now holds a stay while I take it inside - and then when I come out I loop the leash around her neck and we practice heeling and recalls on the sidewalk. She's extremely attentive and responsive (even though she's a chow) and it's because I've spent a lot of time teaching her attention and reinforcing her for watching me and heeling. Just a few days ago we were at the store - and it's BUSY right now, so people were walking by us and pushing carts and all that - and she would glance at the people and right back to me even if I'd left her on a stay and walked 30' away. Her recalls were fast and straight to me, her heeling was prompt with her head up and ears forward and her feet prancing. She was having a blast, was totally focused on me, and it showed. And it was all off-leash.

This whole on-leash phenomenon is a relatively recent thing. When I was a kid you rarely saw dogs on a leash - they ran beside the bikes of their kids and followed them everywhere. I think the human dependence on the leash has led to less training and obedience in the dog. I like being able to take my dogs places and not depend on a leash. I like knowing that if they get loose, they'll come when they're called. I like that they have some freedom at times and aren't always stuck on a line hooked to their necks. Would I let them run free in traffic? Of course not. But having a well-trained dog that will walk calmly by my side sans leash even alongside a road is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.

Melanie and the gang in Alaska

A bit of both, I think. You only have to take a glance at the owner to realise their motivations. Either they are totally clueless and ignorant, lulled into believing that their dog is "well behaved", or they are desperate to show how well trained and obedient their dog is to the rest of the world.

Times change. I hate it when people bring up stories of how it used to be and compare it to the present. Leashes are NECESSARY in the modern world. As nice as it would be to never use a leash and let our dogs prance around willy-nilly, it is not reality. There are roads, cars, an endless number of distractions and other people to consider.

Dogs got killed by cars in the 'old' days. They got lost, they got injured, they got sick - just as dogs in the year of 2007 do. The difference was if a dog got hit by a car, or injured, or sick, people moved on. They didn't question the 'why's and the 'what if's'. It just happened. On that note, you could say that the way we keep our pet dogs now - in 2007 - is a relatively new phenomenon. Most dogs certainly didn't live inside, eat premium kibble and sleep on their owners beds back then. So comparing the leashless days of the past is like comparing apples to oranges. It can't be done.