Irresponsible Owners

[CorvusCorax]

I live on a public footpath and do my best to walk during quieter times, where eise/what else should I do? Like others, mine is fine given space, it's other people who let their dogs come right up in her face with no regard for their safety who are the problem.

 

[Clodagh]

I took poorly socialised puppy to the beach today. It was an all round positive experience. Thank fully no one had an off lead dog that was rude and I used leads/ whistle/ treats as needed to keep her from getting emotional. By the end we were walking past dogs off lead, very chilled out.
I suppose I could stick to my usual strategy of never going out in public, but she needs to be on the shooting field next year.

 

[Unicorn]

There are (off lead, allowed-to-run-up-to-whatever-they-like) dogs everywhere. You can't even avoid them by road walking or sticking to residential streets.

This. Mine is scared/reactive too. I don't have the luxury of living in splendid isolation, but try my hardest to walk in places with a low dog count. And even then we can't always avoid the oblivious idiots.

 

[I'm Dun]

My neighbours again. Their eldest child aged 15 has acquired a young lurcher, aged about 5 months now. So far in the month of having it I do not think that it has even had a collar on, let alone a lead. He was telling another neighbour that he fancied hare coursing with it, as it was a natural. My sheep are due to start lambing in 5 weeks time.

At least the ridgebacks seem to have been kept away from trouble after another neighbour really laid into the father about his irresponsible attitude to them running about out of control.

I hope you get lucky and the lurcher is like my working bred dog. He has zero interest in sheep. Couldnt care less. Rabbits/hares/foxes/squirrels and deer are another matter, but his interest in sheep is less than zero. Quite a lot of the drivey working lurcher types are only interested in specific things and given an outlet wont be an issue with livestock. Doesnt mitigate all the other issues or the legality or morality of it, but would mean your sheep are safe so fingers crossed for you.

 

[rabatsa]

My fear is that the lambs playing at running in groups will trigger the dogs chase instinct. There is only a sheep net fence between the properties in places.

 

[I'm Dun]

Can you run electric fencing? One good zap when he was checking it out cured mine of ever going near an electric fence.

 

[rabatsa]

There is a strand of electric to prevent the equines from reaching over the fence. I am not putting any lower strands for baby lambs to get caught up in. If the dog jumps the net and top rail it will miss the electric wire which is on our side of the fence.

 

[Tiddlypom]

You’ll have to make the fencing between yourself and your neighbours fully agile dog proof from their side, just like we made our joint boundary sheep proof, even though it’s not us that has the sheep.

We have, from our side, post and rail fencing with off set insulators for the horses, a 6’ tall hawthorn hedge which we planted ourselves from whips, and then sheep netting on the actual boundary. All put in by ourselves.