Still here, are we? People having a different perspective to you - and, gasp, expressing it! - still giving you a boner?
You’re funny. Let me know when your membership of the Messageboard Posting Police Squad expires and I’ll buy you a beer.
Aha! Ignore list found. Now I can continue discussing the subject other than some smarmy stalker’s obsession with my messageboard posting habits.
Really? No growling, no barking, no circling, no crouching to pounce, none of the aggressive behaviour dogs usually show when they’re about to attack? Even a guard dog on its own territory whose been trained to attack would show those behaviours, let alone a dog in a public area. Hell, even when they attack other dogs over food they show some signs first.
It’s OK to have a phobia - well, it’s preferable not to, for the phobic, but most of us can sympathise - but it’s still a phobia, and not rational.
I guess, perhaps, in a culture where dogs are always expected to be on the leash except for a couple of well-defined spaces, the only dogs you’d be likely to encounter outside those spaces would be ones whose owners were less likely to care about other people’s welfare, the law, etc, so those off-leash dogs might be worse behaved. That could certainly inform some people’s opinions in an understandable way.
But the off-leash dogs I see in London are amazingly well-behaved because, frankly, they wouldn’t last for longer than a couple of weeks if they ran around taking no notice of traffic and people.
Maybe the word CAN threw you off?
I have about as low a fear of dogs a person can have without being some sorta mega dog whisperer bad ass. I once grabbed an aggessive dog by the throat, threw his ass to ground, and held him there till he pissed himself. After that all was good and he knew who was the boss.
Buttttt, if I see a dog running towards me not obviously being controlled by the owner, there is always the “hmmm, wonder how this is going to turn out” moment.
And then there is the classic cliches like “he’s never biten anyone before!” or “I never saw it coming!” that seem to be associated with way too large a fraction of dog bites.
[Moderator Note]Do not discuss who is or is not on your ignore list again.[/Moderator Note]
[Moderator Note]If you wish to pit another poster, do it in The BBQ Pit. This is not the place for posts like the above, which you should know by now.[/Moderator Note]
If there’s been a dog bite, you’re completely justified. I wouldn’t even dream of debating against that.
It’s the presumption of biting that I can’t get my head around. 99% of dogs don’t do that - you’re more likely to be hurt by a human coming towards you. I mean, dogs are friendly animals generally - they just want to say hello.
I do understand that if one has been bitten by a dog before, then one is going to be wary. Really, I do. But the other side of that is that - if you’re in an environment where off-leash dogs are common and accepted - screeching at someone for something that has not happened is equally not acceptable, past experiences included.
We live in a society which by both necessity and social contract involves being in situations which are uncomfortable. The boundary is the act of harm, which is illegal and morally unacceptable. But acting aggressively on a presumption of harm which is only based in - maybe understandable, but still not rational - prejudice is not acceptable either. One just ahs to get along with other members of one’s society.
I get that I am - and this is becoming clearer and clearer as the thread goes on, and probably defines many of the differences in this and other threads - in a different society to you and that the expectaions of my society and yours are different. I’m just trying to describe mine to you. Should I happen to bring my dog into your society (which will never happen, but hypothetically) I would do my best to abide by your societal expectations.
But going back to the original point - we are discussing a society where unleashed dogs near you (outside, inside, in pubs, etc.) is normal and accepted by that society. So my question is - is profanity and abuse appropriate given the described situation?
Nothing I’ve seen so far indicates it is.
So then you know that it’s hugely unlikely that a dog showing no signs of aggression is going to turn aggressive? Out of context of another dog seeming to steal its food, someone grabbing the dog’s tail, or guarding, in all of which circumstances the dog’s vastly more likely to bark than bite.
‘Can’ implies too high a level of probability for something as unusual as a dog, in public, attacking with no warning.
FTR, even though I don’t legally have to keep my dog on a lead, I do even when the traffic doesn’t demand it, mainly because of the bizarrely huge number of dog-phobics around here. But I wouldn’t expect to have to do so in the woods or in a park and, although I’d apologise for my dog jumping up at someone, I wouldn’t think it grounds for them to hate dogs.
I think people often start out with an open mind and then become hardened in their opinion as the thread moves on and they discuss the situation with input from others. Also, sometimes people just want to share.
I think that’s largely the crux of it. It just doesn’t normally happen. Sure, you hear about it in the news, and you hear about children being kidnapped, and planes crashing, and so on. But it simply isn’t a danger in everyday life; no agrressive dog is going to running round off-leash - at least, not any more often than random violent serial killers are.
I sympathise with those who have been bitten by dogs; just like I sympathise with those who have been mugged, or those who have been raped or attacked. But taking immediate defensive measures or directing abuse at people wearing hoodies or men or whatever isn’t acceptable, either - despite that tragic history. And everyone else can’t be expected to act like everyone has that particular fear; society simply wouldn’t work.
Although dogs are an easier target, I guess.
I’m aware that the statistic I’m going to present does not cover injuries, only fatalities, and the number of injuries is surely greater. But, for some perspective on how often, over the last 40 years the average annual number of fatalities due to dog attack in the entire United States is 17.
I don’t know what to say. I’m flabbergasted that anyone could suggest that it’s perfectly ok to be chased by, barked at, or jumped on by an unrestrained dog. In my world, that’s threatening behavior that any rational person would be alarmed by.
I have to ask, if people aren’t meant to be scared by barking/chasing/jumping, then why do people have dogs for protection? Is a guard dog useless unless it actually bites someone?
USPS mail carriers are allowed, for their own safety, to refuse delivery to any house with a loose dog, and I imagine they have more experience with dog bite prevention than most other organizations. Or do you think the policymakers at USPS just have an irrational dog phobia?
I’m sorry, SciFiSam and CandyMan, but I think your position is ridiculous.
My apartment building just re-banned dogs in a scenario very similar to billfish’s club, after two long years of dogs barking all day, dogs barking all night, and dog shit left on the lawn. The management tried putting up signs, writing letters to the offenders, and even evicting the worst of them. The last straw was when someone allowed their dog to shit in the stairwell without bothering to clean it up. Unbelievable.
I know there must be considerate and responsible dog owners out there and that I probably don’t notice them because they *are *considerate and responsible. But sometimes the bad ones really make it difficult to remember that…
You weren’t chased. Why are you claiming to have been chased when, by your own description, you weren’t? 
I already said that the owner should have apologised for the dog jumping on you. The UPS example is irrelevant, since dogs will protect what they see as their own territory - it’s different to being in public.
What is strange is that you used one dog jumping on you and another dog going near you in the woods as a reason for hating dogs. Now, your inconsiderate neighbours, that makes more sense as a reason for disliking dogs. I’m glad the dog owners round here aren’t like that.
Nobody has said it’s OK to be chased or jumped on. That’s a straw man. If you’re actually being chased or jumped on, by all means get as angry as you want - you’ll get no argument from me.
Same rule with humans. If a human chases or jumps on you, be angry. But don’t assume all humans are going to chase and jump on you because it happened to you once.
“Barked at” is not always aggressive, no matter how much you think it is. Barked at is “talked to”. I’ll agree that barking can be annoying, and excessive repeated barking is a nuisance worth taking action over, but dogs can’t make any other noise other than a bark, a growl, and a whine - you can’t just assume a bark is aggression (well, you can assume what you want, but you’d be wrong). Dogs also bark happily, dogs bark in greeting, dogs bark when excited, dogs bark for all number of reasons.
Clearly, one knows that a guard dog is trained to attack you. That’s like saying “Why do people have police and security guards unless all people are going to attack you on sight?”
Context is everything. One context is reasonable; another is not.
So you believe it’s OK to scream obscenities at someone because their dog walked within 5 feet of you and utterly ignored you? That is my position. If you think that’s ridiculous, so be it - I’m clearly not gonna change your mind, but I reserve the right to utterly disagree with you about that standard of reasonableness.
Ok, I’m starting to feel like it’s futile to try to explain this.
SciFiMan: yes I have been chased. As I wrote previously, I was chased twice recently while jogging, one episode ended in the dog jumping on me. In addition, I had a very large dog charge at me while alone in the woods and then circle around me sniffing my legs, which you ridiculously paraphrased as “a dog walking near me”. These are only my three most recent negative experiences with dogs; I could write a book on the others. Anyway, I’m sorry if I didn’t explain clearly enough.
Candyman: No, it’s not OK. I haven’t said that it is, and no one else has either. That’s your own straw man.
Look, you expressed confusion as to why anyone would be afraid of an unleashed dog merely walking nearby. I was only trying to offer some examples of experiences that could cause a person to develop such a fear. Being jumped on, barked at, or chased by a dog is scary, and if that happens to you several times, you’re eventually going to be wary of *any *unrestrained dog, because you’re going to wonder if *this *dog is going to jump on you just like the last one did. Rational or not, it’s human nature to develop a generalized fear from several frightening incidents. If it bothers you that some people are afraid of your nonthreatening dog, you ought to blame the owners that allow their dogs to misbehave, rather than people who’ve had bad experiences and developed fears through no fault of their own.
SciFiMan, I just noticed that you said you live in London. That may have something to do with the difference in assumptions. When I lived in NYC, I noticed that the dogs were all exceptionally well behaved - they must have been used to being surrounded by people. I imagine it’s similar in London. But in your average American suburb, there’s very little pedestrian traffic. When I pass a dog on the sidewalk, it’s practically guaranteed to take an interest in me; even the leashed dogs have to be held back. A dog walking by and completely ignoring me would be unusual. Maybe that’s why leash laws are felt to be necessary here.
Ah, if you had lots of bad experiences and those were only two milder examples, then your fear is more understandable… Please note, though, that one of the comments you were backing up, the one abut ‘defend yourself,’ was about dogs on leads, not purely free-roaming dogs.
Maybe its even OK to expect peoples unleashed dogs not to put paws all over you covered with dirt?
I dont think things have to get to an attack stage to expect better control of a pet than that.
Otara
Strawman? I thought it was the topic of the OP? That was the story related there, was it not?
Never mind.
You said my position was “ridiculous”. *Your *words; post is above right here if you want to scroll up. If I’ve misunderstood you and you didn’t mean my position was ridiculous, fair enough - I’d be grateful for a clarification. I was working off the - seemingly unambigous phrase “I’m sorry, SciFiSam and CandyMan, but I think your position is ridiculous.”
Given that my position is that the reaction described in my initial post was unreasonable, I’m utterly lost as to how you consider it a straw man. It is the subject of the thread, after all.
I don’t dispute your right to be wary of anything you like. You can be wary of dogs, cars, sunlight, the smell of egg - whatever. That’s fine.
My point is that taking that wariness into the realm of aggressive, obnoxious behaviour is not reasonable when directed at innocents who have done no wrong.
Please read the post. It bothers me when people direct profanity and abuse at me. Be afraid of what you like - I don’t care. Just don’t attack me because of your psychological issues.
No, people are responsible for their own actions. If you direct abuse at someone who does not deserve it, only you are responsible for your actions, not some bogeyman in your past.
I sympathise with your fear. I will not accomodate to the extent that I will accept undeserved abuse.