You can never stress enough what dangers threaten
the average dog (cougars, bears, snakes to name a few).


Many, many years ago I used to take my (I thought)
well-behaved, well-trained dog out on the trail off-leash.
One evening as it was getting dark she saw a deer she wanted
to chase and took off.

As in gone.

So there we were, wandering around in the dark for several
hours trying to find a dog that could have run 20 or more
miles in the time it took to finally find her.


That was the end of off-leash hiking for us.


It doesn't even have to be an attack for
bad things to happen to your dog.

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Dogs on leash feel more obligated to protect their owners.
Leashed dogs can't express themselves with body language and they therefore
feel less comfortable around other dogs and are more likely to be
aggressive.
Don't take the above statements as encouragement to let the rottweiler
belonging to the original poster loose, but do take it as criticism of your
policy of keeping your dog leashed forever because of some incidents in his
youth chasing deer. You could test it out once in awhile and see if he's
grown out of chasing deer for miles.
You ought to be aware that you're keeping him leashed primarily becuase of
your fears, i.e., you're doing it for yourself.

Read "Merle's Door" for more info about leaving a dog off leash all the
time.