While I realize it’s impossible to revive the practice of allowing dogs their freedom, I’d like to go on record as regretting that impossibility. A whole generation of American children has now grown up unacquainted with the unique and varied behavior of free-ranging dogs. We’ve all gotten used to dogs as adjuncts to our lives, constantly with us when we’re at home and absolutely dependent on us for every aspect of their well-being. I doubt that many people even realize that, once upon a time, most dogs pursued lives of their own.
When I was a kid, I’d get up in the morning and come downstairs and the dog would jump down off the sofa where he’d been sleeping and greet me. He’d hang out for a little while to be sociable, saying hello to everyone and checking to see if he could swipe any food from the cats’ dish, and then he’d scratch at the door to be let out. When we let him out, he’d go off to have a day.
We lived in a countryish neighborhood, with quiet windy roads and plenty of open land. For the most part, people didn’t fence their dogs in. (There were a few exceptionally vicious or witless ones who were confined, but that was not the norm.) Dogs would head out in the mornings, meet up with their buddies on neutral terrain, and go around to see what was happening. While it’s true that sometimes their interests would include trash cans and cats, there wasn’t any wholesale cat slaughter going on. (Usually cats stayed a bit closer to home, and dogs didn’t go into each other’s yards a whole lot. Territory was generally quite well-understood among dog society.)
If I went outside to play, the dog would hear me and show up in the yard to see what I was up to. Sometimes he’d keep me company, and other times he’d go lay on the front step or just disappear down the driveway again. Deer, raccoons, foxes and squirrels provided a lot of interest in the dogs’ day, although mostly they outsmarted and outran the dogs.
Taking the dog for a walk usually meant calling him and telling him we were going for a walk. Unlike now, where dogs who’ve been cooped up all day HAVE to be walked for exercise, walks with the dog meant something different back then. If we took the dog for a walk, it was generally a situation where the person was taking a walk anyway, and wanted the dog along for company. He’d cooperate by accompanying us in an approximate way, crossing and re-crossing the road to check out smells. We taught our dogs to “heel”, which back then was a command that meant “walk beside me”. It had no connection with a leash, but we used it when cars came by. Especially if you were walking with a car-chasing dog.
That’s another thing. Certain dogs LOVED to chase cars. It was sort of a specialized dog-hobby. The car-chasers would hang out at the end of their driveways and wait. When a car came down the road, they’d spring into action, running alongside it and barking wildly for the space of about a block. It was sort of annoying for the driver, but not really treated as a big deal. “Some day that dog’s gonna get run over,” my mother would say. And there were the occasional injuries, but I don’t remember dogs getting killed. The cars were going slowly, I think.
I was even thinking the other day of how a common skill we developed as kids was how to deal with dog fights. They were rare, but they did happen - and I was remembering how we’d all been instructed by our parents not to try to grab dogs that were fighting, because then we’d get bitten ourselves. So we’d yell for parents, if some were handy - or we’d scream at the dogs or grab something to whack them so they’d get distracted. Not that I’m romanticizing dog fights — they could be scary — but I appreciate the fact that there was a gritty openness to life which accepted the fact that such things could happen.
Along with “heel”, the most-used command was “Go home!” Every dog knew “Go home”. You’d say it to them when you were starting off for your friend’s house, and you knew that it wouldn’t be practical to let the dog come along. The dog would hear those words, and stop in its tracks with the most pitiable, heartbroken expression. There’s absolutely nothing more dramatically pathetic-looking than a dog whose person has just told it to Go Home. If the dog didn’t succeed in guilting you into changing your mind, he would disconsolately sit and gaze after you til you were out of sight, and then sadly turn and head back to his yard.
At the end of the day, the tired dogs would come in, eat, and collapse on the rug. I don’t remember dogs being underfoot demanding attention much while indoors. They liked to be acknowledged, but they lived alongside of us as separate creatures who had their own separate interests.
Anyway, as I said, I realize that this state of affairs is mostly not possible anymore. Times and attitudes and neighborhoods have changed. It’s just something I was thinking about, that we’ve lost. Even with the myriad industries which have sprung up to meet the needs of our confined companions, none of them can reproduce the relaxed respect which used to exist between people and their dogs as they freely lived their own lives in one another’s vicinity.
