I’m not a dog person. I finde them mildly interesting, but awfully clingy. But they are useful and my parents had a dog and we went along fine.
That said: While I would use a leash, a well trained dog shouldn’t need one.
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Had friends w/Golden Retrievers. The dogs knew me but when I came to their house to deliver mail, they’d bark fiercely and wag their tails. If I reached down to pet them they’d chomp on my arm gently just to show they could.
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I would use a leash, even a well trained dog can be put into a situation where they will inherently react in an unpredictable way that the owner will not be able to stop on time. Another aggressive dog might attack them even though the dog off the leash did nothing wrong. I have also witnessed a well trained dog get spooked by a car it did not see and the dog nearly ran into traffic, the owners barely managed to grab the dog on time. The only time the dog should be off leash is in designated off-leash areas.
That being said if an owner has confidence to have their dogs off leash that’s up to them and hope that nothing unforeseen happens. I preferred to err on the side of caution back when we did have a dog 
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When it’s about breeds, we just go by Schäferhund (shepard dog), omitting the Deutscher (German). I think most people are dimly aware that the full name is Deutscher Schäferhund. Other breeds, like Belgian Shepherd (Suprise: Belgischer Schäferhund) are referred to by their full name.
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Thank you for clarifying! You may understand my confusion, when you say “you” but mean yourself. Because if you had meant myself (was pretty sure you didn’t mean myself, now I know) the wording would be the same!
Harmless ambiguity, for the win.
I wish! You ever tried to train a border collie to not SQUIRREL? Not a pedestrian task. We’re halfway there!!
My dog was attacked by one completely out of the blue when he was 3. He is now terrified of all large dogs with pointy ears. And so I have to avoid GSDs and huskies.
Some dog owners are the pits.
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I prefer that, too. Especially since my son is one of the people who’s afraid of largish dogs. I certainly kept our family dog on the leash, because it wasn’t well trained enough not to go chase after sheep. But as a German shepard/collie mix he was sufficiently large enough to be not afraif of other dogs and kept close to us to defend us. Not trained for that and not aggressive, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be an actual burglar, since he roamed the grounds freely.
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I have lived in places that specifically had off-leash laws (ie: dogs HAD to be on leash at all times except in clearly designated areas), i would see people walking their dogs without one regularly ]: Also both times our old family dog got attacked by other dogs was because those dogs were not leashed.
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I should have said “one” but that always sounds so pompous.
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I know, right? What is one to do? <— i cant even!
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Could always use the royal We 
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I feel the same. Leashes are as much for the dogs’ protection as they are for the protection of the humans around us. And no matter how well-trained they may be, there’s no guarantee they won’t dash off to do something impulsive (like chase a cat or dart into the street.) It can happen in a heartbeat. I’d rather be safe than sorry and use the leash every time they’re outside. But there’s also a leash law in my community, so that’s a consideration too.
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Yes, big thumbs up.
In addition to being a squirrel-chaser, Ivory is territorial when it comes to other dogs. Within a half mile or so of the house, any dog walking by gets barked at. If she wasn’t on-leash, Ivory would run over to check them out, screaming all the way. “Check them out” just means a butt-sniff, but its really scary. If there was a road in between, there’s a good chance she’d get squashed. No looking both ways for her.
(At a dog park, she’s Miss Congeniality, and gets along with dogs big and small.)
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The British dodge that problem by calling them "Alsatians.’
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I had NO idea that this could even happen with YouTube but then I also use uBlock Origin. I cannot stand using computers without some form of adblocking.
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Our neighbors have a big Chocolate Lab that is pretty aggressive and she gets loose frequently because their gate has a faulty latch. On three separate occasions I’ve been working in my in my yard and heard a growling noise behind me. I turned around to see her several feet away from me with teeth showing and the fur on her back standing on end. It’s unnerving. I told my neighbor that I need to make peace with her, so he invited me in to give her treats and pet her. Hopefully that works. All other neighborhood dogs treat me nicely.
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Could be that the dog is insecure and overaggressing to compensate/dominate. Hard to tell without more information, but there are certainly things that can be done to retrain the dog to play nice with you. Hopefully you guys can hash it out 
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I completely forget it is there on my home computer. I certainly miss it when I surf the web in my lunch break at work.
