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I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a priso

I like the author's positive outlook on life. Because when I see a dog act like that, especially in a family where a child has taken focus, I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Me and my dog have been exclusive for almost a decade now. We have traveled across europe, always by my side. Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I've mostly worked remotely during my dog's entire life, so I've always been there, and we've always been able to take a long walk outside. But at the end of the day we have to go home, and I have to fall asleep on the couch after dinner, and I have to work for hours and hours from home, or remote workspaces. So even with all the freedom my dog enjoys, I still feel like it would want more. We have lived in houses with yards, and my dog has lazily spent every single moment outside, in the sun, in the grass. But I still feel like it's insufficient. I have claimed this dog as mine, so it goes where I go, not where it wants to go. If my dog could decide it would have probably died a harsh death in the streets a long time ago. But the dog doesn't understand that. I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety.

pdonis 2y ago
> I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety. Why do you believe that? Bear in mind that our domesticated dogs of today are very different from their wild ancestors (or from wolves, their closest wild relatives).
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Wolves value their pack too. The only lone wolves tend to be young males that were pushed out of their pack and are looking to find/start a new pack. Wolf pack is family, and stays together.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
> I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety Think you're underestimating how much your dog probably likes you... Dogs have a different relationship to their owner than people do with their best friends or parents. It's like the best parts of each relationship wrapped into one for dogs.
- MissPinocchio 2y ago
  [dead]
- amrocha 2y ago
  And sometimes relationships are toxic. Yes, the dog stays with its owner, most times at a detriment to its own health.
Satam 2y ago
I think you're right that for a dog to live its best life it needs the ability to spend a lot of time outdoors with relative freedom. Our labrador had the chance to live like that in an excessively very large garden for his last 4 years. I'm glad he got that, I think it made his life much better. Looking back, when he stayed with us in an apartment he must've been depressed.
- grahamjameson 2y ago
  I would like to expand on this and suggest that this applies to humans as well.
- gretch 2y ago
  In the US, people tend to look at me weird when I tell them my dog lives outside. Some of them probably think I’m a heartless or uncaring dog owner. When I first adopted him, I tried inside first, and he was unhappy and anxious, and so much of that went away when he was chillin outside. I think humans often wrongly project their own preferences onto dogs.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Totally normal in the country, in the US. No fence or anything, either, if you’ve got enough land.
- mejutoco 2y ago
  Not saying it is your case, but I want to add: I think it also depends on the mental stimulation. Hiking I see many country houses big gardens. The dogs in them are rarely walked, and bark at anything that passes in ftont of the house all day long. I think a dog that lives in a house but gets proper stimulation and walks is happier that thosr garden dogs.
rootusrootus 2y ago
> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I regularly meet people like that when I'm camping. I find it pretty frustrating. So many rules like that have basis in reality, they are not just meant to annoy.
- gretch 2y ago
  As a dog owner, I agree with you. I KNOW that my dog would never hurt anyone. But I also know that no one else in the world has spent hundreds of hours with my dog, and to them he is a strange and large animal. Inevitably some of these ppl probably have some kind of childhood trauma related to dogs. So I always have him leashed where the rules are to have a leash.
  - jjtheblunt 2y ago
    My un-favorite is the people with dogs on the spring loaded extending leashes, who let their little crazy dog come running at my feral-parents dog from a distance, announcing "don't worry...my dog is friendly.". The people _never_ ask if my dog on her 2 meter leash (the law in Arizona, btw) is friendly, dangerous, anything. They just announce that their dog isn't dangerous to us. So often the small dog runs up to my dog's face full speed, centimeter from her nose, gets satan-barked at and driven away from us. she's sensibly trying to protect me and her from the little barely tethered full speed maniac. The people ask if my dog was abused. Nope: had her since she was three months old, the feral mom and others were all adopted. They just don't seem to consider that _they_ were aggressive, in dog body language. And that's hopefully eye opening for them.
    - imoverclocked 2y ago
      Just yell back “Mine isn’t!” Then you both get a little bit of an adrenaline rush… On a serious note, I miss the wide open spaces I could bring my dogs to in AZ. Where I live in NorCal it’s practically impossible and even if I could let my dog off leash in some places, the poison oak often stops me from even considering it.
jholman 2y ago
My sense is that dogs prioritize pack/family togetherness ahead of freedom. They don't value all other people (and to a dog, "people" means dogs, humans, and sometimes other species), but also they do not only value their "owner". They value their family, their pack. They want to be with those they want to be with, in action and in rest. After that, they value things like food, exercise, curiousity, and the absence of immediate pain. Most dogs, that haven't been traumatized, seem to have a pretty reasonable attitude toward personal safety: you mustn't let fear rule you. But some dogs, that have been traumatized, can be inordinately concerned with what they perceive to be their personal safety, in some cases to the point of (understandable, tragic) derangement.
ecshafer 2y ago
> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. Having dogs off of leashes is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. A dog should be fenced in or on a leash if they are outside, full stop. Dog ownership should really have a license requirement.
- jholman 2y ago
  > The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. This claim is interesting, if true. Can you back it up? I spent 15 minutes on research, and my preliminary findings, using US statistics (I'm not American but it's just easier to google American stuff) suggest that: a) about 42 Americans die to dog attacks per year (about 0.13 per 100k population) (very high confidence) b) it looks like about half of those are kids under 17, with ages 1-4 over-represented (very high confidence) c) most of those kids-dying-to-dogs deaths are not due to unrestrained dogs in public, but rather infants in their family homes, dying to dogs owned by the child's parents (low to medium confidence) For example, WP gathers media/journal reports on dog fatalities, and has 16 records for 2023 (so presumably about 1/3 of the fatalities for that year). 6 of those are children. Of those 6 children, 4 died to the family pet, the other 2 died to neighbours' dogs while in their own home. Extrapolating from that that suggests that the number of American children killed by poorly restrained dogs, other than their own family, is roughly 6. Out of around 10k child fatalities per year in the US. That doesn't seem "very high" to me, but that's just a matter of opinion. Do you have data that shows a different pattern?
  - snozolli 2y ago
    I'm not the other guy, and I don't have data, but the risk might be far higher outside the US. These days, Americans mostly treat their dog like a family member. If you travel to developing nations, you're far more likely to run into packs of dogs roaming around. Packs of dogs will do things that a solo dog might never consider. It still happens in developed countries, but it's far more common these days to see it in poor, developing countries. They probably don't have the infrastructure to collect relevant statistics, either.
itishappy 2y ago
> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. > I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety. I'm sure you're convinced your dog would never hurt anyone, but are you really sure everyone else you encounter will feel the same? That's a huge amount of trust to put on both strangers and your dog, and I'd argue it has not been earned. I've never encountered an out of control dog, and I pray I don't have to, but I have friends who have. They broke ribs. Eyes would have been next. Please don't make me or anybody else hurt your dog.
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
My roommates' dog got attacked by the neighbor dog 2 days ago. The dog ran across the street into our yard to attack him. There's a reason for leashes.
dyauspitr 2y ago
>I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Honestly, I think the dog would rather have a pack in a family (wife, kids etc.) than a single person to essentially spend the rest of their life with. My dog has so much more energy when the whole family is in the same room.
BatFastard 2y ago
I believe you are projecting your feeling onto the dog. My dogs(2) favorite place in the world is curled up in the crook of my legs. But I do think solo dogs are lonely.
- amrocha 2y ago
  How is the original comment projecting, but yours isn’t?
_yb2s 2y ago
I doubt your dog actually values or desires unlimited freedom in that way… most dogs seem to value family connection and are comforted by an owner calmly directing them and spending time with them. They usually prefer exploring outdoors with their family rather than alone. A lot of country/ farm dogs for example, who have limitless land to explore, will still follow their owners all day, and if the owner is gone tend to just sleep until they return.
spike021 2y ago
> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. All it takes is one time to ruin that for you and probably other people too.
omayomay 2y ago
Do you, by any chance, deep down, feel like a prisoner longing for freedom? reflecting your internal state in the dog?

pdonis 2y ago

> I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety. Why do you believe that? Bear in mind that our domesticated dogs of today are very different from their wild ancestors (or from wolves, their closest wild relatives).

yencabulator 2y ago
Wolves value their pack too. The only lone wolves tend to be young males that were pushed out of their pack and are looking to find/start a new pack. Wolf pack is family, and stays together.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

> I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety Think you're underestimating how much your dog probably likes you... Dogs have a different relationship to their owner than people do with their best friends or parents. It's like the best parts of each relationship wrapped into one for dogs.

MissPinocchio 2y ago
[dead]
amrocha 2y ago
And sometimes relationships are toxic. Yes, the dog stays with its owner, most times at a detriment to its own health.

Satam 2y ago

I think you're right that for a dog to live its best life it needs the ability to spend a lot of time outdoors with relative freedom. Our labrador had the chance to live like that in an excessively very large garden for his last 4 years. I'm glad he got that, I think it made his life much better. Looking back, when he stayed with us in an apartment he must've been depressed.

grahamjameson 2y ago
I would like to expand on this and suggest that this applies to humans as well.
gretch 2y ago
In the US, people tend to look at me weird when I tell them my dog lives outside. Some of them probably think I’m a heartless or uncaring dog owner. When I first adopted him, I tried inside first, and he was unhappy and anxious, and so much of that went away when he was chillin outside. I think humans often wrongly project their own preferences onto dogs.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Totally normal in the country, in the US. No fence or anything, either, if you’ve got enough land.
mejutoco 2y ago
Not saying it is your case, but I want to add: I think it also depends on the mental stimulation. Hiking I see many country houses big gardens. The dogs in them are rarely walked, and bark at anything that passes in ftont of the house all day long. I think a dog that lives in a house but gets proper stimulation and walks is happier that thosr garden dogs.

rootusrootus 2y ago

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. I regularly meet people like that when I'm camping. I find it pretty frustrating. So many rules like that have basis in reality, they are not just meant to annoy.

gretch 2y ago
As a dog owner, I agree with you. I KNOW that my dog would never hurt anyone. But I also know that no one else in the world has spent hundreds of hours with my dog, and to them he is a strange and large animal. Inevitably some of these ppl probably have some kind of childhood trauma related to dogs. So I always have him leashed where the rules are to have a leash.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  My un-favorite is the people with dogs on the spring loaded extending leashes, who let their little crazy dog come running at my feral-parents dog from a distance, announcing "don't worry...my dog is friendly.". The people _never_ ask if my dog on her 2 meter leash (the law in Arizona, btw) is friendly, dangerous, anything. They just announce that their dog isn't dangerous to us. So often the small dog runs up to my dog's face full speed, centimeter from her nose, gets satan-barked at and driven away from us. she's sensibly trying to protect me and her from the little barely tethered full speed maniac. The people ask if my dog was abused. Nope: had her since she was three months old, the feral mom and others were all adopted. They just don't seem to consider that _they_ were aggressive, in dog body language. And that's hopefully eye opening for them.
  - imoverclocked 2y ago
    Just yell back “Mine isn’t!” Then you both get a little bit of an adrenaline rush… On a serious note, I miss the wide open spaces I could bring my dogs to in AZ. Where I live in NorCal it’s practically impossible and even if I could let my dog off leash in some places, the poison oak often stops me from even considering it.

jholman 2y ago

My sense is that dogs prioritize pack/family togetherness ahead of freedom. They don't value all other people (and to a dog, "people" means dogs, humans, and sometimes other species), but also they do not only value their "owner". They value their family, their pack. They want to be with those they want to be with, in action and in rest. After that, they value things like food, exercise, curiousity, and the absence of immediate pain. Most dogs, that haven't been traumatized, seem to have a pretty reasonable attitude toward personal safety: you mustn't let fear rule you. But some dogs, that have been traumatized, can be inordinately concerned with what they perceive to be their personal safety, in some cases to the point of (understandable, tragic) derangement.

ecshafer 2y ago

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. Having dogs off of leashes is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. A dog should be fenced in or on a leash if they are outside, full stop. Dog ownership should really have a license requirement.

jholman 2y ago
> The amount of children killed or injured by poorly restrained dogs is very high. This claim is interesting, if true. Can you back it up? I spent 15 minutes on research, and my preliminary findings, using US statistics (I'm not American but it's just easier to google American stuff) suggest that: a) about 42 Americans die to dog attacks per year (about 0.13 per 100k population) (very high confidence) b) it looks like about half of those are kids under 17, with ages 1-4 over-represented (very high confidence) c) most of those kids-dying-to-dogs deaths are not due to unrestrained dogs in public, but rather infants in their family homes, dying to dogs owned by the child's parents (low to medium confidence) For example, WP gathers media/journal reports on dog fatalities, and has 16 records for 2023 (so presumably about 1/3 of the fatalities for that year). 6 of those are children. Of those 6 children, 4 died to the family pet, the other 2 died to neighbours' dogs while in their own home. Extrapolating from that that suggests that the number of American children killed by poorly restrained dogs, other than their own family, is roughly 6. Out of around 10k child fatalities per year in the US. That doesn't seem "very high" to me, but that's just a matter of opinion. Do you have data that shows a different pattern?
- snozolli 2y ago
  I'm not the other guy, and I don't have data, but the risk might be far higher outside the US. These days, Americans mostly treat their dog like a family member. If you travel to developing nations, you're far more likely to run into packs of dogs roaming around. Packs of dogs will do things that a solo dog might never consider. It still happens in developed countries, but it's far more common these days to see it in poor, developing countries. They probably don't have the infrastructure to collect relevant statistics, either.

itishappy 2y ago

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. > I believe a dog values freedom more than its immediate personal safety. I'm sure you're convinced your dog would never hurt anyone, but are you really sure everyone else you encounter will feel the same? That's a huge amount of trust to put on both strangers and your dog, and I'd argue it has not been earned. I've never encountered an out of control dog, and I pray I don't have to, but I have friends who have. They broke ribs. Eyes would have been next. Please don't make me or anybody else hurt your dog.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

My roommates' dog got attacked by the neighbor dog 2 days ago. The dog ran across the street into our yard to attack him. There's a reason for leashes.

dyauspitr 2y ago

>I mostly see a prisoner longing for freedom. Honestly, I think the dog would rather have a pack in a family (wife, kids etc.) than a single person to essentially spend the rest of their life with. My dog has so much more energy when the whole family is in the same room.

BatFastard 2y ago

I believe you are projecting your feeling onto the dog. My dogs(2) favorite place in the world is curled up in the crook of my legs. But I do think solo dogs are lonely.

amrocha 2y ago
How is the original comment projecting, but yours isn’t?

_yb2s 2y ago

I doubt your dog actually values or desires unlimited freedom in that way… most dogs seem to value family connection and are comforted by an owner calmly directing them and spending time with them. They usually prefer exploring outdoors with their family rather than alone. A lot of country/ farm dogs for example, who have limitless land to explore, will still follow their owners all day, and if the owner is gone tend to just sleep until they return.

spike021 2y ago

> Off leash even, I have always wanted to give my dog the most freedom possible. To heck with human rules. All it takes is one time to ruin that for you and probably other people too.

omayomay 2y ago

Do you, by any chance, deep down, feel like a prisoner longing for freedom? reflecting your internal state in the dog?