You don’t have to like dogs.

You do have to make that clear to some people. Put together a response, have it ready. “Please call your dog. I don’t like dogs and don’t want it near me.” And call restaurants before you go and ask if they allow dogs. And ask your friends to put their dog in another room while you visit.

I guarantee you some folks will assume you are afraid of dogs, and will try to use their dog to cure your “fear.” You will have to be firm that you are not afraid of them, you don’t like them.

I like dogs in general, grew up with a bunch. My spouse’s family always had cats though. After a few years of living with cats vs dogs, cats take the win easy for me for general ease of living.

No needing walks, liter box is easy to scoop, they spend most of the day sleeping and will come by to play or get pet for a few minutes, then move on lol.

Two things though:

1. Some of this is culturally American. In other countries, dogs are not given the same free reign of the house as here.

2. I’m probs gunna get a lot of flack for this… A majority of people have horribly trained dogs. In my experience, most folks consider their dog a “good” dog if it has a good mood, that’s all. Doesn’t matter that it doesn’t listen to commands, doesn’t matter that it jumps all over people slobbering and barking. Doesn’t matter that it is always butting into meals and begging.

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a dog jump all over me, licking my face and getting stinking drool all over my clothes only for the owner to say, “oh sorry haha, he/she just loves people!”

If your dog won’t stop barking the moment you tell it to, it’s a badly trained dog. If your dog jumps up on people when they enter your home, your dog is badly trained. If your dog constantly comes over to the table while people are eating and whines, badly trained.

And it pisses me off that when this behavior happens, the owners either don’t care, or get angry at the dog and do something asinine like lock it in another room alone.

I like dogs! I still want one when my spouse and I have property. I don’t care if your dog gets to lay on the couches and roam the house freely, that’s fine, but it has to act civilized like any other member of the family. Yes it’s possible BTW, any professionally trained service dogs will behave like this and more.

Your post made me smile. Great example of the difference of allowing down votes or not. Can you imaging the down votes this would have gotten on that other service.

Frankly I agree. Dogs are needy. I guess a lot of people like that. Not me. For me that is highly subtractive not additive.

“they’re friendly!”

Oh god, I’ve had that same experience, but while walking my rescue who was deathly afraid of everything. A big dog comes up to us unleashed and I tell the owners to please call back your dog. They do, but it does nothing. My dog almost pulled out of her harness she was so afraid.

Some people shouldn’t have dogs, and unfortunately, that’s most people. I’m sorry you have to deal with dogs with shitty owners. It’s not the dogs fault though, and can usually be re-trained so that they can take part in polite society, unlike their troglodyte owners.

Same. I like/tolerate well-trained dogs, but those are basically nonexistent these days.

Where I live, dog culture is really strong. People here violate leash laws all the time. When you gently but firmly raise a knee to keep a big jumping dog off your chest, the owner acts like you just did a heinous crime. If you complain about not wanting to be jumped on/knocked over by a giant dog that weighs more than you do, you’ll be told to seek therapy for your phobia.

Bad dog owners have ruined dogs for me. Training is considered taboo, something close to animal abuse. Which boggles the mind, because the psychology of dogs is such that they need training and maintenance discipline to be well-adjusted. IMO, not training your dog is animal abuse. But here we are, with untrained dogs running around bowling people over and sticking their tongues in strangers’ mouths.

I feel the same way about children.

Sounds like you’re painting all dogs with a brush dipped in your experiences. I can completely understand that. I also don’t like those situations. They stress me out and make for an uncomfortable visit. I’ve had my backpack destroyed by a Frenchie, slobber on my clothes from a great Dane, conversations interrupted by a Yorkie, and staffie that just made me nervous.

At the same time, I grew up with a Shiba Inu, and I now have my own Shiba. He’s quiet, never begs, requires very little of me, and lays down quietly when guests are over. He loves people and is incredibly protective. It took quite a bit of training and patience, but I’m extremely proud of the good boy he’s turned into.

Yes, I love my dog and I’m not expecting you to, but I am asking you to be open minded to different experiences. There are good and bad owners while there are also compatible dog breeds. If aomwone has a border collie in an apartment, it will destroy everything. Same could be said for a Pomeranian that’s understimulated.

I respect your opinion and hope that you can one day see the good side of dogs and the companionship they bring into people’s lives. While it may not be something in your story, for others it may be a necessary part of their day.

Taking regular walks around my neighborhood has really soured me on dogs. Every other house has dogs barking at me from the back yard or front windows. Almost every dog that’s being walked will lunge and bark at me. There are only a handful of well-behaved dogs that I enjoy seeing on my walks. Frankly, it seems like 95% of dog owners aren’t doing the work to properly socialize their pets.

Hell, I can’t even grill out in my backyard without getting barked at from three different directions.

Sounds more like you are tired of poorly trained dogs and their incompetent owners. Unfortunatly there are many of the latter.

I relate to this a lot.

I entered this thread expecting a lot of pushback and am relieved to hear a lot of people share my experiences.

I will reiterate what a lot of other people have said here: we must take care not to misdirect our anger towards dogs when in reality it’s the owners at fault. But it’s also perfectly okay to not like dogs or want to be around them in my opinion.

I personally don’t think it’s fair to hate any animal, including dogs. But I do think it’s fair to expect that dogs owned by people are trained and under control, especially when off of private property.

To add to this conversation, something that often gets my blood boiling is when on walks in nature reserves and seeing dogs off of leashes in areas marked as requiring dogs to be on leashes, or worse dogs off of leashes in areas where there are not meant to be any dogs at all.

Many of these areas are sensitive wildlife areas. Usually for me as a birdwatcher, these are areas with ground-nesting birds. It’s horrifying the amount of nests, eggs, and chicks of endangered or otherwise threatened species that get destroyed by dogs off of leashes.

Also, the people who don’t pick up their dogs poo. Or bag it up and then throw that bag on the ground/into a nearby bush??

Edit: Grammar

Most people don’t seem to know this oddly, but in lots of parts of the world people don’t really care for dogs. Wild dogs are more common outside of the first world and they can be extremely dangerous. People will often get injured by one and be afraid of dogs for the rest of their lives. I had a roommate from the middle east while I was in college and he said he did not care for dogs at all.

It is also pretty common these days for people to straight up not follow the law in regards to their dogs. Having dogs off leash in a nature area seems to be very common nowadays. My own dog gets very nervous while near an off leash dog and I basically had to stop taking him with me on hikes since they are so common. Makes me very angry.

I’m kinda there with you. My cousin has two chocolate labs and every time I’m at their house I hear their name combined with the word “stop it!” Or “get down” or some other variant every 5 minutes or so. I’m sorry, dogs are just inferior cats. Cats are pet perfection.

I think you should direct these emotions more towards the owners than the dogs themselves.

As a dog owner that’s absolutely fair.

We do bring our dog places, but they have to be 1) explicitly dog friendly (and still not just randomly in stores, even if they allow dogs, and definitely not restaurants? breweries with outdoor spaces though, sure) and 2) we do things like go for big hikes or doggie play dates beforehand, so our dog is happy to just sit underneath our table or right beside us and people watch. If he ever starts getting disruptive (barking/crying, won’t stay still) then we pack it up and go - that means he’s not having a good time (and we’re not either if he’s not just chilling) and there’s no reason others should have to deal with that too. Fortunately this is rare, but this is how the dog owner social contract should go I think.

And absolutely he can’t just approach people and is never off leash outside of his specific home spaces (our home, specific family homes). Are people just bringing their dogs to your home and setting them loose or something? Like that’s wild and outrageously rude, our dog never goes to someone else’s private space without 110% knowledge that they’re good with it, and even then he gets tons of stuff to ensure a successful visit (again, lots of activity beforehand + things like his gates, crate, toys, etc. to keep him occupied and safely away from things that could just potentially be issues).

If you’re someone who just really doesn’t like dogs, the only time and place our dog should ever occupy your attention at all is if you’re physically in our house. Which like, he’s very social and friendly, but still very much a dog, and while we’d do everything we could to make you comfortable, we’d probably just not meet you in our house most of the time.

:(