dogs on leads in busy streets

Even though I'm an advocate of the necessity for dogs to walk off-lead beside their humans on an everyday basis, I certainly don't mean to suggest a busy street is a place for that freedom.

Today was full of excitement - of a kind I could do without.

In the morning I took three dogs out for an on-lead street walk because their owner is not well - they were Bonnie, an elderly mutt who is a regular visitor to our house; and two gorgeous West Highland terriers who don't know me. All went well until I looked down and realised one of the westies, Scruffy, was wandering along beside us not attached to his lead. He had backed out of his collar.

I think I might have stayed calm if we hadn't been near one of the busiest roads in our neighbourhood -Bell St in Heidelberg. Scruffy danced away from me and raced towards Bell St. What to do? I hurried the other dogs to their home, on the corner of that road, grateful to a man who was dashing towards the busy highway to try to head Scruffy off. I thrust them inside the gate and was surprised to hear the other man say, 'Well, that's okay, then.'

What? I looked around, and there was Scruffy with the others. He had darted inside when I opened the gate.

It took me a long time to stop shaking and realise that all's well that ends well, but eventually I drove off towards Reservoir.

As I stopped for the lights at the massive intersection of St George's Road and Murray Road, I was horrified to see two little 'white fluffies' - probably maltese crosses of some kind - playing in the middle of the traffic.



Not straying near the traffic - PLAYING in between the masses of cars and trucks that were travelling through the intersection. The two little devils were chasing each other between the vehicles.



( I took the photos of the intersection at St George's Road after the two little dogs were safe, so they're not in the picture.)

So I parked my car as close as I could, grabbed a leash and checked my pockets for doggy biscuits.

But they weren't going to be caught. They were having too much fun. I got the council ranger's phone number from a nearby business and called for help.

An hour later it was safely resolved, thanks to the help of a passer-by who played with them and fed them my treats in the - unfenced - front yard of a nearby house.

Guess what? The ranger knew them. They've been out before. As far as I'm concerned, some people don't deserve to have a dog. I'm not going through that intersection again if I can help it. I don't want to see a little white body in the gutter.

What a day! It would be a relief to go for a walk at relaxing Gardiner's Creek with Penny and her friend Jabari. I headed along busy Manningham Road towards Blackburn.

And there he was - a THIRD dog roaming off-lead near a busy street. A black labrador. I zoomed to a halt in the car park of a nearby school and fumbled for doggy biscuits. Lucky I'd restocked my pocket.

Once again, no way was this dog going to let me near him. Worn out by the stresses of this doggy day, I rang Jabari's mum and poured out my story to her.

'Is he on the road?' she asked.

'No,' he's near some fences.' By this time he was barking fiercely at me.

'Okay, get in your car and leave,' she commanded. 'That's the sound of a dog on his own territory.'

'But...'

'He's not lost. You can't help.'

She was right. As I plodded towards my car and the patiently waiting Penny, the dog slipped through the palings of a fence.

Today has convinced me. The days of groups of carefree children roaming the streets with their dogs are gone. Our streets are too dangerous.

All the more reason to value those places where dogs and people can stroll along together, safely distant from traffic. We need to make sure our community developers plan for off-lead walking areas for dogs and their humans.

a war on dogs?

During the weekend I read a feature in The Age newspaper's Good Weekend magazine. It was by Frank Robson, who with his partner is sailing Australian waters, accompanied by their dog, Lucky. I've previously posted about the book he wrote about Lucky. I enjoyed it and recommended it as a light-hearted read for any dog lover.

In this feature article he's mainly recounting the misadventures they had while sailing, but Lucky gets a mention once again; I was struck by the following section:

Twice a day, whatever the weather, we take Lucky ashore for toilet breaks. We always clean up after him, but refuse to be cowed by Australia's official war on dogs: if all the no-go zones were observed, dogs wouldn't be seen anywhere except sulking in backyards, which is crazy.

I'd say, from reading blogs from around the world, that the question of no-go zones for dogs isn't just an Australian issue. It seems as if the whole world has begun to believe that the only safe dog is one on a leash, walking at most half a metre from her owner's leg.

I think this is partly due to the increase in motor traffic, but to me it's also a result of the culture of over-protection.

When I was growing up, it was usual for dogs to ramble around the streets with groups of children, all having fun together. Nowadays, you're not likely to see either the children or the dogs. The kids are 'safe' inside their houses, cocooned in a sedentary lifestyle that is probably going to cause massive health issues in the decades to come. The dogs are lying around waiting for the magic moment when their people take them on an outing, all too often a boring promenade over hard street surfaces in a haze of car exhaust fumes

There seem to be two issues: one, keep the dog on lead to save her from danger; two, a dog on lead will be less of a danger to passing humans.

Vilmos Csanyi, in If Dogs Could Talk, says,

Dogs are very conscious of having a leash, and for them this is not a form of restraint or a symbol of slavery as is believed by enthusiastic liberals who know nothing about animals.

To a certain extent I can see what he means: Penny loves her lead and seems to think it's her way of making sure she's got her person coming along behind her.

But I also see how she quivers with joy when we reach the part of the park where she knows she can go off-lead.

Terry Ryan and Kirsten Mortensen, in Outwitting Dogs, discuss the leash from a dog's perspective:

To a human, a leash is a device to manage a dog - to keep a dog nearby; to prevent a dog from running off after (or away from) a car, bike, or critter...for a dog a leash is a sensory experience - it's what causes pressure on the dog's collar or harness...this leash sensation doesn't mean anything inherently.

One thing I'm sure of - I get more exercise if Penny is walking off-lead beside me, because she races to keep up with me. But if she's on lead she wants to investigate everything we pass.

I don't think she's deliberately being contrary, because dogs just don't think that way. But it sure seems like it at times.

working together in Darebin Parklands

Penny sniffed our legs when we got back from the Darebin Parklands today, checking where we had been. She was probably wondering whether we would head back with her, but she was out of luck. We were worn out from all our work there and she'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how many native plants we put in this afternoon.

However, one lucky dog came walking past during the afternoon and of course I took the chance to slack off and say hello.



Every time I go planting in the park I learn something new. Today I reckon I saw the best garden implement ever. Peter, the park ranger, has made a contraption that goes on what I think is a chain saw motor. It has an auger on the end of a metal pole - and it digs holes in hard, dry ground! Fabulous doesn't even begin to describe it - with drought an ever-present reality, gardening has become more back-breaking than ever it was in the past. (And, sad to say, I'm not young any more.)


After the working bee (or should I be more modern and call it 'park care day'?) there was a party to celebrate thirty-five years of community action by the Darebin Parklands Association.

It began with a welcome by Uncle Reg Blow, an Aboriginal elder, member of the Darebin Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Council and facilitator of the Darebin Parklands Spiritual Healing Trail. (It was his son who led the group of pilgrims around the spiritual healing trail on 11th July).It was a highlight of the afternoon listening to the thrum of the didgeridoo against the whisper of eucalypt leaves and the chatter of rainbow lorikeets.

On a more mundane note, another highlight was the dee-licious cake that was the centrepiece of the celebration party.

dogs and building bridges in Darebin Parklands

Penny stayed at home today while her humans went down to her favorite spot - Darebin Parklands, our wonderful urban bushland area.

We weren't there literally to build bridges; we were actually planting native flora, as we've done before. But, given the distressing argument that's still going on, about the future of off-lead dog-walking in this area, the day was also an exercise in bridge-building.

If you were to look at this picture, you would see a community co-operating to achieve wonderful outcomes for the future.



However, amongst the people working alongside each other there were very different viewpoints about the future of the Parklands.

Some want dogs limited to an area that I consider inadequate and destined to cause enormous conflicts. They think dogs are a danger to the habitat values they've worked for over the years.

Others believe this is an unreasonable reaction to the presence of off-lead dogs in the park and want a wider-ranging area for off -lead walking.

All too often I've heard the saddest word of all used in this argument. The word is they.

In my opinion there's only one word that really counts - we. We all love this area with a passion and that passion is the fire that keeps us all fighting to see out viewpoint win.

But when the decision-making process is finally complete and our local councils hand down a ruling, it will be time to work together, as we did today, to continue to protect this wonderful open space for our future and that of generations to come.

seven week search for a missing dog

Penny is lying safely in the kitchen as I follow the online diary of the seven-week attempt to capture a Bernese mountain dog that ran off in a panic in Washington in the US. I'd sure hate to think of Penny terrified and alone in the bush like that dog.

I found the link to this amazing story of persistence at Bark blog

It's a gripping diary of events as they happened, with video clips that had me on the edge of my seat.

origin of the dog name fido

Penny was named after the copper coin that is no longer in circulation in Australia. It took three of us a nice long hotel dinner and a lubricating bottle of wine to come up with this name, based on the fact that she was a red-head when she was six weeks old.

Now we think she's a strawberry blonde, but we still love her name. And we don't make blonde jokes about her - well, not when she's listening.

Newspaper editors seem to love using the name Fido as a a short-cut in headlines about dogs.. But I've never actually met a dog called Fido. Except for the giant sculpture near Fairfield railway station in Melbourne.

I stood near that statue some weeks ago handing out leaflets to promote discussion about the pros and cons of dog off-lead areas in our local parklands and I got to wondering why it's called Fido. Turns out it stands for Fairfield Industrial Dog Object! Seems it was erected in 2000 to represent the dog-loving community. Well, if the latest plan to restrict dog off-lead walking in Darebin is any indication of the Council's attitude to dogs, then I think they should re-name it. But that's another story...

Back to Fido as a name. As far as I can discover, the most famous dog of this name was Abraham Lincoln's dog.

I take a more in-depth look at this name in my new blog about the fascinating language that surrounds us and helps us make sense of our world.

dog learns the hold it trick

Penny tried a new trick today at K9 Kompany - pulling along a cute little toy cart of toys. But we didn't have any luck.

The idea was that she would use her mouth to grab a ball on a string attached to the handle and as she pulled it the cart would move behind her. However, I realised she had forgotten the trick we practised last year called 'Hold'. If she doesn't get the idea that she has to 'hold' the ball as she comes towards me, then she'll let it go as soon as she feels the weight of the cart.

So, tonight it was back to basics in our 'kitchen training' schedule. I used a clicker as my marker instead of the more usual 'Yess!" because I found it difficult to mark the exact moment when she was still holding the object.

(By the way, the thing she was holding was a strong, flexible toy made by Aussie Dog - I think it's probably manufactured from fire hose, but I'm not sure. We've had ours for years and it's as good as the day I bought it.)