I found this online on People magazine. Delete if not allow. Thought this would help people be aware.
24-Year-Old Loses Eye After ‘Freak Accident’ from Retractable Dog Leash Leaves Face ‘Caved In’ (Exclusive)
Edited font size of title; it is not an active link
I looked up the story - how awful. This girl is blind in one eye due to this horrible accident.
I’m not clicking on the link, but those retractable leashes give a false sense of security. I knew a guy whose dog got startled and bolted while on a retractable leash, and the whole mechanism broke apart - poor dog got hit my a car in its panic. In less dramatic ways I can’t stand them because it gives owners the impression that they don’t have to pay any attention to their dog at all.
As she chose this instead of a frayed rope leash I guess a freak accident could have happened with the other leash as well. The problem often is not so much the leash as it is that many family dogs are poorly trained. I have a feeling that that has increased post-Covid when many used the opportunity to get a pet (not suprisingly, about a year after covid a lot of teen-dogs were advertised for adoption).
The it-trend here is dogs in harnesses, and it is quite obvious that many of those dogs could benefit from a few minutes training each day. A harness then becomes part of the problem, not the solution.
Terrible. Unfortunately, the larger a dog, the more possibilities for accidental harm. Like a friend’s wife was yanked off her feet by their large dog chasing what was presumably a squirrel or such. Fell onto her face and knocked out all of her front teeth.
Large dogs always carry the potential for greater force than smaller ones. You can’t easily pick them up, either, especially once triggered.
And if anything happened to them illness or accident wise, you’d be carrying heavy dead weight to get them to emergency care.
Personally, I avoid sitting large dogs, knowing the above. And I’d certainly never get a large dog of my own.