To Hershey's Dog-Mom

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

If you're taking your adorable chocolate lab out for a stroll on the bike-path on a lovely Sunday afternoon, please protect your dog and other people using the path and keep him on a leash.

I witnessed an almost-accident at close range as the dog ambled from one side of the path to another, forcing a bicyclist to slam on his brakes and stop hard to avoid hitting him.

He doesn't know any better, he's just a dog, doing what dogs do. You, on the other hand, should.

Comments

[buckturgidsen.livejournal.com]

I think what you're saying is that (1) if people aren't capable of properly assessing the risks of a particular behavior (for example by mistakenly assuming that things that have never happened before can't happen) then they may make poor and potentially harmful choices. (I definitely agree with you.)

...and (2) for certain types of decisions, people shouldn't be trusted to make risk assessments and decisions themselves. (Again, definitely agree -- for example we don't trust ordinary people to walk around Somerville carrying handguns no matter how convinced they are that are careful/responsible enough to do so.)

...and (3) the decision to let your dog off-leash is one of these types of decisions.

Both agree and disagree with #3. I get why we have a leash law. I don't trust every dog owner to do the right thing. I believe that parks are first and foremost for people to enjoy and dogs shouldn't be allowed to pose hazards or nuisances for people. I wish we lived in a world where everyone was responsible and considerate of others, but we don't so we need laws.

However I also believe that if a dog-owner is careful and respectful that they can *selectively* let their dog off-leash (even against posted rules) without being irresponsible.

Does this seem hypocritical? I don't think it is. To squeeze a little more juice out of my now-tired metaphor: I sometimes drive over the speed limit and I don't believe this makes me irresponsible ... but I also get why speed limits need to exist and don't support the elimination. My guess is that most people probably feel the same way.

So you can post whatever signs you want. I'll understand why they're there. Certain behavior is unsafe, annoying, or irresponsible. It will be so regardless of whether there are signs and laws. The laws just enable the city to crack down on the bad behavior. But if I am walking my dog off-leash on an empty bike path, I am not going to feel guilty or irresponsible about it. Posting the law won't change this any more than posting another 55 sign on I-93 would make you feel more guilty for driving 60.

animal versus machine

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Just poking my head back in now.

I think the fault with your analogy is this.

A car is a machine. Generally, when you take your car out for a drive on the highway, and exceed the speed limit by whatever margin, you're trusting your own judgment and training to ensure your safety and those on the road with you. Absent some catastrophic hydraulic failure, you're in control.

A dog is an animal, driven by instinct that can override the best training, given the right circumstances. When you take your dog off the leash, you're trusting the dog's training and your ability to maintain control over it - an animal with its own mind. That's a further remove - you can't control the dog directly the way you can a car.

Certainly, if there's nobody else on the bike path (rare, but it happens) you've picked the best possible circumstances to disregard the law and let your dog off-leash. However, there's nothing to say that something - a squirrel, a kid on a bike, a stray firework, whatever - might cause your dog to leave the path and end up somewhere where there are people, or cars, and get hurt. There's also nothing to say that somebody else, it being a community path, doesn't come along at any moment, on a bike, with a kid, whatever. So you're taking a calculated risk.

You've constructed a very narrow case - nobody around, take dog-off-leash. On its face, it sounds perfectly reasonable - and like exceeding the speed limit, unless you're caught or the dog gets into trouble, everything's fine, and nobody really cares.

The law exists to nail the people who create problems - judgment of personal responsibility are irrelevant to the law, strictly speaking. Either you violated the law or you didn't, and either you're prosecuted (or fined) or you're not.

If there's nobody else around to see or by affected by you with your dog off-leash, there's no one to render judgment, and your flouting the law has no actual effect. Yet, if another person with a dog comes along, and decides to take his og off-leash, you've just added the unknown of his dog to the equation - the cost to disobeying a law is that unless you're absolutely alone, and nobody knows about it, you make it more likely that others will disregard it as well - and they may not be as considerate as you seem to be.

On top of that, you come into a thread started about a specific incident about an irresponsible owner during a high traffic time on the bike path, which took a side bar into a long-standing issue with many unleashed dogs during a high traffic period, saying that you're a responsible dog-owner who only takes their dog off-leash when you're completely alone.

Aside from the problems outlined above about being "completely alone," you're doing this on a path that is expressly a public resource for the entire community. So really, whether you're a responsible dog-owner or not is completely irrelevant. This isn't a referendum on whether it's possible to construct a case where disobeying the law hurts no one - it's a discussion about where disobeying the law almost led to an awful accident, showing the exact reason why the law was enacted in the first place.

I said that I believed it was my responsibility as a dog-owner (alas still-theoretical at the exact moment, though I've owned dogs before) to keep my dog leashed on the bike path because:

• I'm very rarely on the bike-path when there's nobody else around.
  
• I can't guarantee that nobody's going to come along while I'm playing.
  
• I can't guarantee that something might catch my dog's attention and send him bolting after it.
  
• I believe the social cost of disobeying a law meant to ensure dog-use of the bike path is too high to risk an incident. By social cost, I mean people unfairly vilifying all dogs or dog-owners because of the inconsiderate actions of a few - like when Tuft's field went from allowing dogs to not allowing them because some people didn't pick up after their dogs. It only takes a few high profile incidents, or many smaller ones to restrict the opportunities for dogs.
  
• I believe that lobbying for increased dog parks or areas where dogs can go off-leash legally is the right solution.