Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

Leash Me Alone

Man's best friend is said to be the dog. Canis lupis familiaris, to be specific. Everybody loves dogs, right? From heroic Lassie to Duke, the lazy old hound dog that belonged to Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies, from the taco bell chihuahua to Disney's Ugly Dachshund, we all adore every last one of them, right?

Well, not really, actually. They smell, they bark, they drool. They get hair on everything and track dirt in from outside. They knock things over and break them and they dig up your garden. And they bite. Whatever the reason, a lot of people don't actually like dogs. Even worse, some are actually scared of them -- kids especially.

My kids are rather hesitant about dogs they don't know, especially ones as big as they are.

One of the great features of Stern Grove (a park that has been a prominent part of my life in many ways) is a dog run area. There is a large section of meadow set aside as an off-leash area. Dog owners can take their dogs off-leash and let them run around to their heart's content (and health, of course.) Outside that area, dogs must be leashed, especially in the area where the Pine Lake Day Camp is held.

Now, the dog meadow is clearly delineated by a deep trench and black chain-link fence on the west side, a parking lot on the east, and the canyon walls to the north and south. Still, however, dog owners either don't see the marked edges of the canine section or they just don't care -- they often let their dogs run off-leash throughout the entire park despite signs that clearly say dogs must be leashed elsewhere in the park (especially near the day camp).

On Thursdays, the day camp begins at one o'clock in the afternoon and goes until 6pm, at which time the kids put on a little show for the parents. Each group (the kids are separated by age) sings a song and performs a short skit. They're mostly the same songs and skits that they did pack when I went to Pine Lake several hundred years ago. Regardless, the kids love doing it and the parents love to see it.

So we were leaving the park, going in the opposite direction from the dog run area after the skits and potluck and letting the kids run around. As we got to the far end of the lake, we saw a medium-large dog at the edge of the trail, off-leash and alone. Now, my kids like dogs, but are understandably and rightly wary of dogs they don't know, especially ones whose owners are nowhere to be seen. They were feeling a bit nervous as we passed the dog and got more so as it started chasing after them.

That's when we heard from the owner, standing off to the side at the rim of the canyon. It took him a good five minutes to get down the hill to gain control of his dog, by which time, the kids (and Rachel) were quite upset. When the owner -- a young man in his late teens or possibly early twenties -- finally got to the dog, I told him that my kids were scared of dogs (while not entirely accurate, it got the point across) to which he responded that his dog was really friendly and wouldn't hurt anyone.

My kids are scared of dogs.

His dog is friendly.

Do you see the disconnect there? His dog could be the second coming of Christ and it still wouldn't matter. My kids are afraid of dogs. That his dog is friendly has no bearing on the situation. By saying that, he completely discounted my children's feelings as being unimportant and misguided.

But it wasn't about whether or not the dog was friendly, it was about their feelings. Now, my kids are perfectly at ease with dogs they know or that are under control (this one clearly wasn't since it ignored its owner's calls), but when you have a rogue animal hounding them (pun intended, sorry), they get upset. Telling them that it's okay does not help the situation.

You might as well tell someone that it's all okay and that they aren't really going to drown as you waterboard them.

What bothers me most about this incident is not that it's another example of an irresponsible dog owner disregarding the rules, or even that the kids were upset by the dog. It's the callous disregard this guy had for the feelings of others. What was important to him was not the fact that two kids were frightened but that his dog be allowed to wander freely.

I think this is a common problem in human interactions. Each party sees the situation only from their own point of view, rather than taking into account the other person's or other party's position. In this case, the dog's owner failed to recognize that his dog's temperament was irrelevant to how the kids felt; he was focused solely on his own point of view -- that the dog was harmless.

A little more effort to understand situations from someone else's point of view goes a long way. Sadly, most people are unwilling to do that.

Related Links Lassie Come Home (1943) The Ugly Dachshund (1966)

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