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To dog owners (again): I don't want your dog to touch me.
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Anonymous
lol I live in DC and in the part where people do all kinds of obnoxious and even criminal things and yet even here, I never have people running up to me, sticking their faces in my crotch, or licking me. Because humans and dogs are different. |
Anonymous
People literally sleep on sidewalks and absolutely intentionally touch strangers |
Anonymous
Dogs and humans both have different restrictions on what they can do on sidewalks. Sidewalks are dog and human friendly. |
Anonymous
DP. And that is never okay. Touching people is not okay. |
Anonymous
A person sleeping on a sidewalk doesn't actually harm me. I don't love it but as long as they aren't obstructing the sidewalk, it doesn't impact me. I've lived in DC for 25 years and have never been intentionally touched by a stranger. If a person walked up to me and licked me or stuck their face in my crotch, I would call the cops and press charges and they would be arrested. Why should a dog be allowed to do something that would be a criminal act by a human? |
Anonymous
You can keep saying this I guess. I am starting to think the pepper spray idea mentioned earlier is a good one. I didn't originally think so because I don't want to hurt a dog, but if this is the kind of person with a dog walking around, maybe I need to start pepper spraying dogs the way I would pepper spray a human who tried to jump on me or lick me. |
Anonymous
DP Yes, owners are required to license their dogs. I think Pp was suggesting that there should be a requirement to license owners. This sounds analogous to cars where every car is required to be registered and have a license plate, but in order to drive a car, you must have a license that certifies you have proven you can do so safely. This sounds like an excellent idea and I fully support it. On a slight tangent, I think there also ought to be some kind of certification for service animals that requires a prescription from a doctor or licensed therapist and proof that the animal has been appropriately trained. |
Anonymous
But the point is that PP said there was no scourge of issues with humans on sidewalks touching humans. That is wrong. |
Anonymous
I mace anyone who approaches me on the sidewalk without express permission that they can come into my vicinity. It works great. |
Anonymous
Because, as you keep noting, dogs and humans are different. All jokes aside, dogs don’t have “intent,” and evidently you have been unintentionally touched by humans on the sidewalk. And aren’t you the one who said it is NEVER OKAY for a dog to brush up against a human? |
Anonymous
But no one is defending out-of-control people who touch other people, saying that everyone should just expect to be grabbed or pushed by strangers, and insisting that if you don't want to be touched by random strangers something us wrong with you and you're a bad person. All any reasonable person wants is for dog owners to (1) have control over their dog and (2) not allow it to approach, charge, or touch others who have not indicated that they are okay with that. As a lifelong dog owner, I think that is 100 percent reasonable; indeed, I expect it of my self and any other dog I encounter. Coming up some extreme hypothetical where your dog is pressed up against you but the sidewalk is so crowded that it might touch someone -- c'mon. I've had a dog bound up to my picnic blanket, sit on my food, and stick its face in mine, while the owners complained that I "must not be a dog person" because I shoved it off. My kid got bit by a dog that she just walked past and the owner defended the dog by saying "just he doesn't like little kids." WTF? Dog owners need to get it together. |
Anonymous
No one on here is defending out-of-control dogs either! PP is taking the position that a dog brushing up against her on a crowded sidewalk is a violation of her rights and morally offensive. Not a single person thinks off leash or jumping dogs are okay. PP’s position is totally extreme. |
Anonymous
The fact that dogs don't have intent and don't understand that not everyone is okay being near them is explicitly why dogs are required to be leashed and humans are not. The point of the leash is for you to force your dog to do things that humans are expected to do without a leash, like not sniff and lick everyone walking past. If you just leash your dog but continue to let them do these things that would get a human arrested, then you aren't actually complying with the leash law, which is why leash laws almost always including phrasing like "controlled by a leash" of a certain length. The law doesn't just require your dog to have a leash, they require the owner to be actively using the leash to keep their dog away from other people. Because human beings are capable of intent and can understand stuff like assault laws or even just social norms, we don't leash them. But if a human violates these rules they can be arrested and/or publicly shunned and shamed, whereas a dog cannot be because a dog isn't a person. The problems is that many dog owners think leashes are for decoration and that dogs should be permitted to bother anyone they want as long as they aren't biting or attacking, and that's explicitly not what the law says. The law says you need to control your dog via a leash (which means pulling it away from anyone they approach unless that person has explicitly given permission to be approached). Thus how a dog owner comes to believe a sidewalk is a "dog friendly" space simply because their dog isn't banned from being there, and the dog should be permitted to wander and approach people at will. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the law and why it exists. |
Anonymous
Brushing past on a crowded sidewalk is incidental contact. It's clear from the OP and from other comments that no one is talking about a scenario where a dog briefly bumps into a person on a narrow sidewalk as they pass each other. For some reason some of the dog owners on the thread have assumed this is the ONLY scenario OP is talking about when it's clearly not even in the same category. My guess is that someone very fearful of dogs would simply avoid a sidewalk so narrow that they were bumped by well behaved dogs walking by on leashes. Very few sidewalks are actually that narrow. Also when I had a dog, I almost never took my dog places like that specifically because of all the incidental contact, it can be stressful to dogs and even if it's not, it keeps them from doing the stuff dogs really like on walks (exercise, sniffing things, feeling more free and unconfined than they do at home). OP is obviously talking about dogs who *approach* her. Meaning there is space for them to pass without interacting, but the dog wanders over to "say hello." Anyone with a dog knows what this means. It's your dog walking up to a person and expressing an interest, maybe wanting to sniff them or check out what they are eating or see if they want to play. Dogs do this a lot, some more than others, but part of training a dog is making sure he knows NOT to do this with strangers unless you've given permission. This is actually what it means to have a trained dog. And it can be critical to your own dog's safety because when you train dogs on this, you also train them not to approach other dogs without permission, and this is really important to keeping dogs safe and keeping public spaces with multiple dogs calm. I hope most of the people intentionally misunderstanding this are trolls because it is really disturbing reading all these so-called dog lovers intentionally misunderstand a really basic requirement of dog ownership, which is that you need to keep your dog from bothering other people in public areas. This is like Puppy School 101. |
Anonymous
I've seen both pee on the sidewalk. However, the dog stood to do it. |