It’s against the law to be in public with your dog unleashed. This does not stop a horrifying amount of dogs or owners from doing this all over Miami, FL. It’s both shocking and upsetting for dogs and owners like me for a variety of reasons so let’s get right into this.
Several years ago, with my other dog Levi, I was innocently walking in my suburban neighborhood and someone opened their gate and unleashed (literally) their french bulldog onto my Shiba Inu. It was extremely scary and the owner was really reckless in not only her whereabouts but also her reflexiveness in getting her rabid dog off of my innocent pup.
Then, just over 2 years ago, I moved to a urban area of Miami called Wynwood, and got another Shiba Inu dog named Kiva. During this time, I have had severe PTSD and the symptoms surfaced several times in exchanges with unleashed dogs. Frighteningly, most of the dog owners treated me like I was a crazy woman. They would constantly try to reassure me that their dogs were sweet. They would judge me for picking mine up until they got their dog under control from jumping on me and trying to get to my dog. We could be here for days with these stories, quite literally. I never waivered my thoughts but I would get in front of their judgement with saying that “my dog is aggressive and I’m sure your dog is sweet.” I realize that I was placating the situation but I just didn’t want to deal with the ridicule and it was true — Kiva is dog aggressive.
The truth is, I should never feel like I need to justify the safety of my dog when your dog is off leashed. EVER. You should be explaining to me why you feel the need to allow your dog to walk freely when it’s not safe for anyone. It’s not safe for dogs — them or yours, it’s not safe for kids, it’s putting everyone in a compromised position. And frankly, it’s not fair anymore that we the responsible dog owners have to be subjected to this.
Let’s walk through why it’s not safe for the dogs. There are obvious reasons, and then lesser obvious reasons. The obvious reason is that not all dogs are nice to people or other dogs. I’m not about to get all statisticy on this post (yeah I know that’s not a word, so what!?), but judging by the monthly posts I see on my neighborhood nextdoor.com activity, dog attacks are far more common than these owners think. If the dog is not prone to being aggressive naturally, it still puts the leashed dog at a disadvantage to the unleashed dog. The psychology of that makes sense, right?
Okay, so onto my story of what happened this weekend that has prompted me to go on this storytelling exercise AKA rant. My dog and I were walking on Saturday night through a parking lot and past an upscale Chinese restaurant called Palmar when all of a sudden, I see a huge dog get up from his slumber. I thought there is no way he’s off the leash and as soon as I thought that, him and his buddy come running over to my dog and he starts attacking her. It really did happen that quickly. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, “help me” while running around in circles with my dog flying through the air to prevent the dog from latching on which he attempted to several times. I was scared to bend down to pick her up cuz not only would my face, arms and hands be in the way of the dogs grip but it would also give the dog time to latch on and then..well that wouldn’t end well. SO I kept moving around in circles and luckily my dog is agile enough to jump up high. It took what felt like 2 minutes (could have been 90 seconds — definitely not less) for the owners OR someone to get this fucking dog away from mine.
At this point, my PTSD that I had worked for 2 years to get under control, went into full blown panic attack. I wanted so badly to call the cops, to talk to the owners, to deal with the restaurant manager, but I couldn’t. I was crippled with anxiety and my fight or flight mechanism once I was able to stop shaking and breathing heavy and all that went on kicked in and fled me from the scene. I think about that decision a lot. Three women came to help. One, I suspect was in her car and stopped — after witnessing this middle aged women screaming and a huge dog in attack mode on my innocent little baby. Two of the women brought me water from the restaurant so I suspect they were employees of Palmar. Thanks to you ladies, if you read this. I was in shock, and blacked out to an extent. My throat is still hurting from screaming 2 days later.
Luckily, my dog is ok. My arm was killing from the turning around and lifting her in the air. Like I said, my throat was killing that night and is still sore today. My entire evening was ruined and they went on their merry way as if nothing happened.
The next day, I went to an area that has a lot of grass in an area of Miami called Midtown. When you live in an urban downtown style setting, finding lots of grass for your dog can be tricky. Since she didn’t get her business done the night before with this incident, I wanted to ensure that she had the optimal opportunity to do so. She’s quite picky about her setting for that. As soon as she was tucking in to do her thing, another unleashed dog walked over. I immediately picked her up and started the anxiety attack. It was like clockwork, I was crying and saying to the owner, “please keep your dog away. I had an incident last night that has left me shook.” He was telling me to calm down and that his dog was nice. No leash in sight. He finally walked away and I kept seeing him trying to lasso his dog back towards him throughout the rest of their walk, still unleashed.
What do we as responsible dog owners have to do? Avoid places we know that are heavily trafficked with dogs to avoid these hassles? The place where my dog got attacked was not one of those. It was at a high end restaurant. Do we have to develop quicker reflexes to pick our dogs up to avoid confrontations and continue to get ridiculed by owners that insist that their dogs are sweet? I really want to know what the answer is. If you know, please let me know in the comments below.
