Rant time - sorry! (not sorry...)

This week I’m going to get on a little soap box of mine… retractable leads. I know some of you reading this will swear by them and use nothing else but please keep an open mind while you indulge me this.

I appreciate that retractable leads offer your dog more freedom than you may be able to afford them normally. However, we use a dog lead so that we have control over our dogs to keep them safe. But how safe really are they when they are at the end of a retractable lead? Used carefully and responsibly risks can be reduced but they still have more risks than a 6-foot lead and there are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly, when your dog is at the end of the retractable lead, they are so far away from you that they can get into trouble and you are powerless to help. I have seen dogs who have wandered into traffic while walking on the path but at the full extent of their lead. And if you are saying to yourself that you would never do this, what if an aggressive dog ran up to your dog and attacked them. Your dog cannot escape from this situation if they are on their lead.

Even if that dog wasn’t aggressive, dogs can easily get tangled in their extendable lead and this can cause dogs to display aggression even in the mildest mannered of dogs. There are many reported cases of owners being bitten trying to untangle dogs in just this situation. And in this melee dogs and humans can sustain severe friction burns, cuts and tourniquet type injuries sometimes ending in amputation. Or they can just be a trip hazard for joggers and other walkers.

In one case I know of personally the retractable lead malfunctioned unlocking the lead and a well-behaved dog just wandered in front of a car and you may say was lucky just to escape with a broken pelvis.

From a training point of view, they pose a real problem. Because we use them to give our dogs more freedom, they pull to sniff some grass, so we unlock them mechanism. Teaching our dogs to pull for freedom. Additionally, in no way are we able to use them for recall training because if our dog chooses not to come back what can we do?

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought over the use of the retractable lead, so go on treat your dog to a beautiful fixed length lead!