Dogs should be kept on leads at all times – end of

Let me start by once again declaring that I really like dogs . If our eldest daughter wasn’t severely allergic, and we didn’t live in a flat in London, I’m sure my wife and I would be having regular conversations about getting one. Now that’s established, let’s return to my thoughts on those who own dogs.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my increasing frustration with what I see as a growing arrogance among dog owners who seem to have developed a belief that everyone, everywhere must love their pet and be happy with it invading their personal space. I cited numerous examples I’d witnessed in recent weeks of dogs off their leads as their owners strolled miles off in the distance, oblivious to what their animal was doing. That particular theme is now making headlines this week, with The Times reporting Tower Hamlets in east London is considering new rules which owners worry could result in a ban on dogs being allowed off leads, even in parks.



The council has said the rules are a response to violent dog attacks and repeated fouling. Under the proposals, dogs would be excluded from “all gated play parks and sports areas” and would have to be kept on leads in “all public spaces in the borough”. Open space areas could be the exception but that has yet to be defined, hence the owners’ anxiety.

Dog walkers may also be restricted to walking a maximum of four dogs at a time. Now to me, that all sounds pretty sensible. Dogs should be on leads in public spaces.

Obviously, as animals, they need a healthy amount of exercise and I’m not advocating for all dogs to be banned from all parks, but I do think there is a reasonable conversation to be had on encouraging dog owners to have better control of their animals. I can also see the logic in dogs being restricted to only some parks or perhaps certain sections of others. Urban settings are designed for humans, not animals.

The idea of keeping dogs out of gated play parks is a no-brainer as far as I am concerned. It reminded me of a picnic we held for my daughter’s birthday last year in the park at the end of our road. During the picnic, a dog ran up to where we were sitting and tried, as dogs do, to grab whatever food it could.

When its owner eventually arrived, rather than apologising, she decided the correct response was to tell us we shouldn’t be having a picnic in the park and told us we should instead be having it in the gated playpark. Her argument was that the park was for the animals and not for the people. Read Next I don't trust people who don't like dogs Again, I feel like some dog owners have lost a bit of perspective when it comes to the rights of their pets.

Yes of course, we understand you love your dog, but why do other people have to accommodate your decision to not have it under control? Dogs enjoy parks to run around in, burn energy, do their business, meet other dogs – you know, “be dogs”. I get that. However, there are degrees to which that can be accommodated.

Letting dogs off the leads in urban parks and then scrolling on your phone while they run wild is surely not that responsible. The same, I would argue, goes for the size of some larger dogs which find themselves homed in urban settings. The other day my daughter suffered a serious allergic reaction after being licked on the face by a dog in our local park.

We had been talking to a neighbour when out of nowhere the dog ran up and tried to grab the snack she was eating. Why was that dog not on a lead, or at the very least trained well enough to not behave in that manner? Is the solution really that children shouldn’t be eating in open parks? What if that dog had decided to bite rather than lick? One problem highlighted in Tower Hamlets is that it’s not just the park settings we’re talking about here either. Too many people have their dogs off the lead elsewhere.

On the way back from nursery pick-up the other day, we came across a dog walking through the other prams and families by itself. Its owner was a way off half-heartedly calling for it to “stay”, but there was no urgency. They could not have responded in time if the dog decided to jump at one of the children.

What justification can there be for not having a dog on a lead in that scenario apart from arrogance and laziness? A dog on a lead allows those who are scared, allergic, unable to move fast, whatever, to move past them unperturbed. A dog off the lead can be chaotic. If your dog really needs to be off a lead to stretch its legs, get yourself out of the city.

I really, really like dogs. But I think as the behaviour of their owners continues to make national headlines, and they complain at anything seen as an infringement on their animal’s rights, I can’t shake the belief that dog owners have lost sight of how they are behaving. The impact of their decisions seems to be growing all the time.

My theory is that people are not calling it out because the majority of us think dogs are cute. I too subscribe to that belief, 100 per cent. But there is nothing cute about having no control of an animal capable of causing distress and damage.

The cutest thing a dog can do is be under control..