May be a dumb question?

[babymomma]

BUT , for those who tether your dogs, what are they tethered to ?!

I do not have a fenced yard, therefore my dogs are tethered. which makes me nervous because one of my dads German shepherds that he had growing up, chased after a mink while tethered to a tree in their yard, and ended up breaking his neck, and died instantly. (r.i.p Eagle)

does it make a difference , if say what they are tethered to is more flexible? I feel really dumb asking this, and probably rightly so.

Anyways, is there any tethers or, ground stakes or anything that can help prevent things like that from happeneing?

 

[Airn]

We use a trolley system for Gwen. It was really easy to set up. (You drill some holes in the building/tree/post where you want the two ends to be.)

Gwen gets annoyed at it because she's used to free reign, but it works pretty well. You can't have anything between the two points, though. But, it's helped out a lot.

And our's was pretty cheap. 50' of trolley for under $20. It is safe up to 100lbs I think? Gwen's 30lbs so we got a medium strength one. There is some give to it but not much. I would go to a hardware store to purchase it. Pet stores are way more expensive (like closer to $40 for what we bought). You can even make your own. I'm not that great with hardware stuff so I opted to buy it

 

[*blackrose]

We either tether to a tree, or to a stake in the ground. Depends on where we want them tethered and what the quality of the ground is. The little ones are tethered to a metal...thing...(apparently it is meant to shoot bullets at or something...) that weighs about a ton, and since they're all of ten pounds it is pretty dang solid.

When I was worried about Chloe clotheslining herself as a puppy, I would tether her only when she was wearing a harness. (So if she reached the end of the tether, it wasn't putting pressure on her neck.) She learned really, really quickly where the boundaries of the tether were, however, and she would halt from a dead sprint if she felt like she was drawing near them.

There have also been instances where the stake in the ground just pops out if she exerts enough force. If she were ever in a dead sprint to kill something, the stake would probably give before she would. Or even the chain, for that matter, as I use a chain that is meant for a smaller dog.

So I vote: work on boundaries (Chloe knows, "Watch it!" means she needs to slow down or she'll get jerked) and keep them on a harness when they're tied. Better yet, don't tether them unsupervised.

 

[Keechak]

Back when I used a tether (I have a fenced area now) I purchased several feet of bungee cord and weaved it into the tether rope, so that just in case the dog hit the end of the rope it didn't stop dead, instead it stretched an extra 5-7 feet longer to absorb the impact.

However, the dog who used the tether was also well trained to the boundaries of how far he could go and would under normal circumstances stop before he hit the end. If he saw a rabbit or deer he would simply bark at it while tethered and not run after it. The bungee part was purely for those "IF"s

 

[babymomma]

thanks guys.

Mine are good with boundaries, but casey really looses her brain when shes concentrated on small animals and forgets herself.

Also , our new tenants sometimes will tether their dog and leave him unattended (not for long periods of time , but for 20-30 minutes at a time) and he has NO perception of his boundaries. AT ALL. I swear hes going to hurt himself badly. He has alot more weight behind his lunges then either of mine do (140 lbs, where as both of mine are 10 lbs and 45 lbs)