I grew up in a small town in the 1950s - 1970s. For the most part dogs roamed free…sometimes ours did, sometimes not. There was always a ‘dog community’ though, and they were generally adapted to the needs of the human community. Dogs looked after kids (saw a dog once steer a middle aged man away from a two year old…and they’d go get someone’s mom when needed. Ever try to swim around a Newfoundland dog? ) Aggressive dogs would be culled either by other dogs or people. The free roaming dogs understood traffic, etc. I had a dog that rode around with the milkman, taxis, or sometimes the dogcatcher (whose job was to capture problem dogs). Now, after many years of leash laws in that community, I see pictures on Facebook that illustrate the consequences. One woman had three grizzly bears in her front yard eating apples and chilling…and I am always getting notifications from the community page “cougar spotted in lakeview, keeps children and pets indoors”, or “bear here, bear there”. The much larger community I live in now , Edmonton, AB, had no leash laws when I arrived in the late '70s. The neighbourhood I moved into at that time had five German shepherd dogs roaming on the block I lived on. No wild animals, no prowlers at night ( I was still in my ‘going to the bar’ years…walking home too drunk to drive at 3:00 AM was also something dogs in other 'hoods didn’t approve of, so there’s that. ) Anyway, now, after years of leash laws, we have had a moose in the back yard, cougars prowling around, coyotes ( who will attack humans and who don’t get rabies vaccines ) and innumerable jackrabbits that make home gardening very difficult. We now have a bobcat who hangs around the house, see the prints from time to time. Tradeoffs…
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