Stop and Smell the Hydrants
Comments: 14
I’ve noticed something about the way a lot of people walk their dogs. They’ll be walking along and the dog will lurch towards a scent it thinks worth investigating. Rather than stopping and letting the dog have a bit of a sniff, a lot of people yank on the leash and continue walking. The dog doesn’t get a chance to fill its nose with any of the information dogs crave.
For people the equivalent would be being led blindfolded to the train station on your way to and from work. You’d have a rough idea of where you were, but key pieces of sensory information would be missing.
Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the hydrants.
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Posted to General Rants • 2003.10.06 (Mon) • 16:47
Comments
Posted by Johan Svensson 2003.10.06, 19:19
The first two times my brain parsed it as “Stop and smell the hydrogen.”
Yes, this is important for dogs. My parents call it “reading the Dog Times.” :-)
Especially reading the personal ads. And adding their own.
Posted by Jerry Halstead 2003.10.06, 19:25
You’ve got pMail!
Posted by Timen 2003.10.07, 03:25
Though I do believe you make a valid point, I believe dog owners get sick of stopping every time the dog needs to, and eventually end up not doing those stops at all. I’m not a dog owner, but I think dogs will get used to it, and if they don’t, tuff luck: we’re the masters. Brutal, eh?
Posted by Adelle 2003.10.07, 04:33
I actually like it when my dog stops to smell… gives me a chance to rest! LOL! Can you tell I exercise very LITTLE?!?!
Posted by DJSUbg 2003.10.07, 05:19
Here in NYC we have people who sniff hydrants too ;)
Posted by woodrow 2003.10.07, 06:46
Dog Walking is very often an exercise in patience. You let your dog stop here and stop THERE and stop again HERE and stop THERE and it can take five minutes to go fifteen yards. That’s why you see them being dragged along - we just want to get them to the park where you can let them off the leash to run around and sniff to their heart’s content without irritating you. I mean, what am I supposed to do while my dog buries its nose in some piece of street furniture every four steps?
Posted by Dog Sympathizer 2003.10.07, 09:02
Dogs are locked up (most of them) all day while their owners are working. They finally get to go outside to get some energy out and to go to the bathroom. When I see someone yank on their dogs leash, quite frankly, it pisses me off. How would you like your boss to yank on your tie because you’re working too slowly!? Yeah, I didn’t think you’d like that. Ease up on your dogs and let them enjoy their 10 - 15 minute walk outside since most of their lives will be spent behind bars or confined indoors.
Posted by jh 2003.10.07, 10:44
If the owners of these dogs were indeed rushing to the park where the animals could be allowed to run around for a while, that would be good. But there are no parks that allow unleashed dogs anywhere near where I live. What I meant to identify was a definite sense of impatience with the dog that I notice reasonably often.
I don’t mean to suggest that all dog owners are denying their dogs any opportunity to check their pMail any time they go for a walk.
Attitudes to pets in Japan, especially dogs, are —- how can I put this? —- less developed than in some other countries. Put simply, dogs are often not treated terribly well (or, the other extreme, they’re dressed in little bonnets and pushed around in strollers as surrogate children, but I guess this happens in a lot of places).
Almost nobody has a decent sized garden in Japan so there’s not a lot of space for dogs to run around at home. It’s not uncommon to see them tied up in front of the dog house with only 3 or 4 feet of rope. On a few occasions I’ve seen owners tie a leash at chest height without leaving enough slack in it for the dog to sit down!
Posted by dowingba 2003.10.07, 11:22
Soon they’ll just be pasting their dog’s head to a wall.
Posted by Mr. X 2003.10.07, 16:02
people who love animals (and live in a city) don’t have pets.
Posted by Mar-Shay Jones 2003.10.07, 21:29
The problem I see is dogs who pull their owners all over the place, rather than owners who yank on their dogs leashes. There seems to be an overabundanced of untrained dogs here in Tokyo that think they are the masters. Some dogs will pull their owners along throughout an entire walk without letting up—and the idiot owners tolerate it. Sheez! This even happens with tiny dogs. You’d think you could just pick the thing up, hold it upside down, and read it the riot act.
Posted by dowingba 2003.10.07, 23:52
You’d receive a nasty pMail for doing that, I’d imagine.
Posted by jk 2004.02.28, 05:18
I walk dogs for a living and I can tell you that after the sixteenth pole they are marking in the span of 50 feet it gets to be too much. The dog mindset is either they are submissive and you are diminant or vice versa. NYCdog walking
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