French children are paranoid, not well-behaved, it just looks the same to the casual observer… but I digress. Obviously there are regional doggy differences in France – I get what you’re saying, on the whole, but if I leave our Cocker Spaniel outside the supermarket I get dirty looks from the dog-loving manager, and once I even got a phonecall (my number’s on her collar) when I tied her up outside a shop in town. People treat me as if it’s abandonment, not natural behaviour. However, many, many dogs ARE abandoned here. Two large (and somewhat) scary hunting dogs hung around our town for a whole summer, until one of them must have been hit by a car. It’s rather upsetting.