My wife and I work for county government. I work from home, but my wife will take one of our dogs to work about once a week. About 20 people in the office. Everybody loves it when our dog is there.
The rule is only one dog a day, so people alternate with their dogs. Some sort of sign up sheet.
We have another dog that probably wouldn’t work. He’s a border collie pointer mix. He’s snapped at a few people. I don’t really know why. He gets a weird vibe from some people though.
Both dogs have had professional training to the tune of $2500 each.
Bingo! I really like cats and dogs, but I don’t want their panting, their dander, or their scent around my dinner table. There is no law that says that an enterprising animal lover cannot open an “animal friendly” restaurant like the one the OP describes. I won’t be there, though.
I agree with the OP, but this is one of those problems that is simply unsolvable, given the nature of the current US population. I wish there were easy ways to shop and handle chores while out with my dog, but I can’t find a good solution. To be blunt, she can handle it just fine, but the incompetent, whining, useless population which surrounds us makes it impossible. I can neither bring her inside, nor leave her in the truck. Both have their dangers.
Take her inside with me?
We just completed a multi-month training project with our new puppy, and have reached the point where she responds very well to spoken commands (heel, sit/stay, come). As a graduation exercise the trainers went with us to Home Depot, where we shopped for a full hour, getting her accustomed to the noises, people and the concept of holding while in the checkout line. And she was wonderful. But the other people’s dogs? Dear god what a clusterfuck. There’s a reason many businesses deny animals categorically. I can only imagine the nightmare of expecting a minimum wage employee to analyze and decide which animals to reject. And that employee would have to deal with our growing population of entitled dipshits who would wail about the decisions.
Leave her in the truck?
I’ve found two good solutions to maintaining interior temperature while leaving her in a parking lot (in the Texas heat). One is a battery operated interior A/C that can cool sufficiently for 2-3 hours. The other is a combination of electronic changes (Intermotive products) which will simultaneously boost the engine idle to maintain cooling, and lock the transmission when it senses I’m no longer in the vehicle. While either would be effective, I put myself at risk of two factions of the moron busybody (MB) population. Either are likely to endanger my dog and/or damage my truck in a self-aggrandizing frenzy of self-congratulation, with selfie sticks at the ready. One is likely to object to the large idling vehicle as an offense to Mother Gaia, and the other* would cast themselves as saviors of the poor overheating doggie.
So sadly, my well trained and acclimated dog must sit at home while I’m out and about, all due to the increasing percentage of entitled/busybodies.
*This actually happened to a friend who tried the portable A/C with his dogs. MBs attacked his car window in order to “save” his dogs.
Most Sundays my gf goes to the feed store, and she always takes a dog. For 11 years that dog was Kali, our GSD. After Kali died she started taking Kizzy. It’s a feed store, with a store cat, and dogs are welcome.
When we visit our dog friendly brewery, Leaning Cask, if we don’t bring Kizzy with us the owners and bartenders ask after her, worried that she’s ill.
Other than those two places, I wouldn’t want to bring a dog into a business. Doing it correctly is a lot of work.
In Saint Martin, many vacationers from France bring their small dogs along and they are welcome in all the restaurants and stores.
In New Orleans at the Erin Rose I saw a woman passed out cold at the bar, sitting upright with her jaw hanging open, with an ancient Boston Terrier sitting on her lab, also sound asleep. I so wanted to take a picture, but that would have been rude, right?
After watching a parrot sitting on some guy’s shoulder spray crap over about 8 feet of fresh meat at a grocery store, I am dead set against allowing anything but properly trained service animals in businesses.
I remember being a teen in Europe in the late 1980s, and among the things I experienced there that would be unthinkable in the US (including the collective attitude of not giving a shit about drinking age, IDs, etc) occurred in Paris. We were eating at a restaurant and a cat was wandering about, sniffing diners and eating scraps. No one gave her a second thought.
I think that, in the US, we’re far too uptight about far too many things. Including animals indoors.
This would be absolutely fine with me. Although frankly I haven’t owned any geese that could be described as well-behaved, snakes are quite torpid and always beautiful, and rats are my very favorite cage pets, Also would be okay with smaller ponies and donkeys, goats, sheep. Okay, I have goats. Not goats.
But the whole answer is contained in the words “well behaved”. Will your dog heel quietly into a public place, lie down under your table and STAY THERE without getting up, whining, or barking, without anything more than a single ‘down, stay’? Much less your typical sheep or pig.
I don’t know anyone with a dog like that except dog trainers. I have one dog like that right now but the other is still too much of an irrepressible lunkhead at two years old; he’ll get there. I have dogs like that because I am an experienced dog trainer. Experienced enough to know there are very very few dogs trained even to that very basic level. And dogs are the species most adapted to human social needs.
It isn’t so much ‘irresponsible’ people, it is that 90% of people who own pets have little control over them other than what the pets naturally do anyway, and have no idea how to get that control. Believe me, I’ve worked with all kinds of people who really want to get their dogs to obey them. They don’t even know where to begin. And these are the motivated ones.
Good on them. Part of Guide Dog training is to do things just like this. My wife would take our dog past the buses at the school across the street to get used to the noise.
Yep! Here’s Kizzy a few years ago sitting patiently while my gf orders a drink.
And here she is grown up, sleeping at the bar.
I never have to repeat a command. But my gf works with her daily, both for general obedience as well as agility.
This right here. Who gets to determine “well behaved”?
Leave the pets at home.
I’m a dog fan, but they ain’t sanitary. They don’t wash their paws, don’t wipe their ass, eat and roll around in dead things. I don’t let them in my kitchen or couch, and I love mine.
as you can get) and I often see people bring dogs inside stores. It’s not a problem.
