Jumping on the christmas picture bandwagon

barn63 said:

You're right. And you can also see how busy my street is.

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I see three homes tightly packed just in that picture. I assume the same number is on your side of the street, which makes six. Most Americans have at least two cars. The whole street must be tightly packed with homes. Sounds busy enough to me.

Regardless of “busyness” on a residential street I wouldn’t let my young male puppy off leash without any ID in any situation except a training class in a very controlled environment and at a securely fenced in area, it just isn’t worth the risk.

Obedience training at that young age can fail, and your dog could run off after an animal or bitch in heat or just because he is feeling his oats and needs to run, run, run and then he could become stolen (some people even steal dogs out of fences when the dogs are kept out there for periods of time unsupervised), in a shelter (hopefully no-kill), or injured by a car or ran off further by people that are scared of "big black dogs", Dobermans included.

Many dogs with high prey drive (like Dobes) can run off after smaller animals getting lost and/or get hit by cars each month. Or people might have to swerve off of the road not to hit your dog and hit something else, injuring themselves and damaging their car. Or he could get into someone else's property and eat something dangerous without your immediate knowledge, like antifreeze. Or other loose dogs will come up to you loose dog and then you don’t have control and serious accidents that are sometimes fatal can occur then. Or neighbors might get sick of seeing the “scary” Doberman run at large in the neighborhood and take matters in their own hands. Or you can get fined for letting him off leash in your front yard. I am sure you live in city limits from the look of the picture and there are leash laws for a good reason. To protect people and their pets. Your dog could be killed if he got loose and bite someone and didn’t have current rabies information. I could go on, but basically my long point is there are many situations that could happen.

I can totally understand off leash (not no ID or collar) in a huge nature area with a good recall, but never ever a puppy in a urban, city, or street area for common sense reasons.
Accidents are just that, accidents. No one ever means for them to happen, they happen in spilt seconds and not usually on purpose. That is why responsible owners take steps to protect their pets with indoor housing, crates, fences, ID’s, and leashes.

I take the time to say all of this only because I care about your puppy dog, you have to take steps to protect him, which is our job as owners of course. And I know you would be crushed if anything happened to him and you could have easily prevented it. He is very cute.