Its risky to not leash your pets.....

But also:

We had a mama deer give birth in our yard a few years back. The fawn grew into a buck but kept visiting. Until one day our new neighbor was out doing some project in his front yard with his unleashed dog. It's a big dog, and not a breed that was developed to soft-carry ducks that had been brought down. These were bred to hunt something big and mean.

Well, our boy deer was walking up the hill, snacked in our yard as he often does and then continued on. It was really sweet to see him getting his second set of points and grow into a healthy buck. Looks like he got to keep our yard as part of his territory, too!

And then, the dog saw him. Neighbor-dude didn't even notice as he'd gone around the corner of the house, but his dog took chase. The buck was still ahead when they disappeared around the grassy curve of the hill on the other side of the valley, maybe a half mile away. Dude came back and started calling for his dog, then whistling for him. And no, the dog is not trained to respond to a whistle. Eventually the dog came walking back up the street & plopped back down in the yard as if nothing had happened.

We haven't seen our buck since.

Please keep your dogs leashed when outside your house.

The skunk was OK, the dog had to be taken to the vet to be deodorized.

As I said, it was the *last* time we let a dog off leash outside