Watching a woman driving a dog past my house like a carthorse is just another ‘new normal’ of lockdown. This moron had two long ropes attached to a harness around the body of her huge dog and was trying to steer it along the village green by long-reining it from behind as though it were a pony.
The poor dog looked utterly fed up. I don’t know, because I couldn’t face asking her, but I got the impression that like the rest of the idiot new dog owners out there, she thought this system was less cruel than putting a conventional collar around its neck attached to a conventional lead.
That, you see, would involve pulling on the dog. And the new owners won’t do that. They’ve watched something weird on YouTube, or gone for lessons with some snake-oil salesman pushing the latest fad in natural dogmanship, which tells you to allow your dog to choose the way it wants to walk around a public space, even when it is on the lead.
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