To the over-confident owner of the insecure, fearful dog
Pets can be great icebreakers, but if you disregard leash laws there’s a dark side to off-leash
Nobody tells you when you get a dog how intimate you will become with every sad patch of grass and gravel outside your door. If you’re an urban dog owner, your animal is not your best friend: a lush median strip is your best friend, a mound of dirt adjacent to a construction site is your best friend, a fire hydrant is your best friend. In other words, pretty much anything (besides your own floor) on which your dog can comfortably relieve himself is your best friend.
I got a puppy a few weeks ago, a miniature poodle named Homer, and Toronto has come to feel like a whole new city. For one thing, strangers talk to me — especially strangers who have dogs. And though we talk, a lot, I never learn their names — only the names of their dogs. “Who’s this?” they ask, looking down at Homer, not making eye contact with me even though it’s obviously my response they’re waiting for because Homer, though quite intelligent, is not going to introduce himself. “This is Homer,” I say, “and who’s this?” Rocket, Teddy, Dash, Beyoncé: these are a few of the canine acquaintances Homer and I have made these past few weeks. The nice thing about dog-inspired small talk is that unlike traditional small talk, involving two humans at a cocktail party, you don’t need to think about or speak about yourself.
It’s odd, but I’ve learned that I’d much rather tell a perfect stranger about the size and consistency of Homer’s stool than remind an acquaintance what it is I do for a living, and (shudder) how I feel about current events.
But friendly nameless owners aside, there is a dark side to dog life in the city.
Enter the over-confident owner of the insecure, fearful dog. The guy who thinks he knows his animal companion so well and who is so absolutely certain his dog will never misbehave, let alone maul a person or another dog to death, he lets him walk off the leash outside the park — sometimes on a busy city sidewalk. He does this even though his dog may not be the perfect angel his owner believes him to be, but a menace to society and anyone on rollerblades. I encountered one of these menaces last week when I was walking Homer in a park near my house. Luckily, the lone wanderer — a mastiff of some kind — took a greater interest in me than he did in Homer, who he could have swallowed whole. The dog lunged at me and proceeded to mount me, until his dishevelled owner appeared, reined him in and apologized. “Sorry,” she said. “He gets excited.”
The city of Toronto is well aware of these excited and potentially dangerous nuisances. This week, a city spokesperson announced amid rising complaints that this summer it will crack down on people who let their dogs roam off-leash outside designated dog parks. The fine for violating the city’s off leash bylaw? Up to $365.
“Not everyone loves (dogs),” Toronto’s Director of Bylaw Enforcement Rod Jones told media. “We’ve got dog lovers and non-dog lovers and everyone has to co-exist.”
But the question remains: how can co-existence occur if over-confident owners don’t take the off-leash bylaw seriously? If they think coexistence means other people who are afraid of dogs (or who simply don’t like dogs) must learn to live with free-range pets walking alongside them? It can’t.
My wife assumes off-leash dogs must be well behaved, like model prisoners who are granted leave from jail for special events, because otherwise their owners wouldn’t let them roam free, but I’m not convinced. Last month, a Chihuahua in Edmonton was mauled to death by a pit bull walking off leash. The owner of the pit bull was reportedly shocked by the dog’s behaviour, remarking that he had never done anything like this before. Owner obliviousness seems to be the one consistent ingredient in almost every case of off-leash dog violence. It’s for this reason that I tend to view these free-range pets the same way the city of Toronto does: with extreme trepidation.
No matter how cuddly or friendly, dogs are unpredictable. They are animals. It doesn’t matter if you dote on them everyday, nor does it matter that they like to have their bellies rubbed. Sometimes they kill other animals and small children.
Loving your dog unconditionally is harmless when all you want to do is talk to strangers about what his favourite chew toy is this week, and how many times a day he goes to the bathroom. But when that love blinds you to the fact that your dog is an animal and thus, unknowable, then you’re not just misguided. You’re dangerous.