I’m generally a fan of places or experiences that dog owners can enjoy with their well behaved dogs—but not so much when it’s with other people’s unruly, reactive, or loud dogs. Couple any of that with owners who make no effort to limit their dogs’ intrusion into other people’s space or hampering wait-staff, and any progress that has been made to include dogs goes out the window.
I was visiting my sister-in-law and niece in a nearby town recently when we decided to walk to a nearby burger-and-brew sort of place that has an outdoor patio. It was a lovely evening, so we weren’t dismayed when we were told it would be at least a 30-minute wait for an outdoor table; we were catching up and in the meantime we could enjoy the view of the sunset and the perfectly lovely early-summer temperature. When I glanced around the patio, to see how far along most diners were in their meals (and gauge how much time we might have to wait), I was surprised to see a dog at nearly every one of the eight or nine outdoor tables—but hey, I’m a dog lover! No problem!
However, when a server directed us to a table on the far side of the patio and we made our way across the area, I had an immediate instinct that the situation was borderline dangerous. Several of the dogs in the patio were standing or sniffing at the end of fairly long leashes, which were being loosely held (or sat on) by people who looked frankly inattentive to their dogs. I thought to myself, “This situation is ripe for a dog fight!”—and that was before I saw, lying flat in the space between our table and the one next to it, a very large dog, taller and heavier than my own 70-plus-pound Pit/Lab-mix, whose leash wasn’t being held or tethered at all!
To take a seat on the picnic bench for our table, my niece and I either had to step over the dog, or ask the owner to ask his dog to move. My niece, who loves dogs, was about to do the former when I gently arm-blocked her; there is absolutely no way to know how a strange dog would respond to opening his eyes in time to see a strange person stepping over him! I made eye contact with the dog’s owner and said, “Do you mind asking him to move so we can sit down?” He looked down at the dog, and then at us, and said in a slightly annoyed tone, “He’s OK, he won’t do anything.”
I could have been argumentative and said, “Hey, you know, I’m not going to put my beloved niece’s legs at risk of a dog bite,” but instead I took a more direct approach: I whistled to alert the dog, who immediately sat up. I smiled at the dog and his owner and said, “Oh, what a good dog!” and slipped past the dog so I could pull out the bench for my niece and I to sit on. I didn’t think the guy would have brought an aggressive dog to a crowded patio, but I wouldn’t ask any snoozing dog—and especially one who probably outweighs my niece—to tolerate being stepped over by strangers!
I gained more and more sympathy for the servers every time I saw them wend their way through the crowded patio, pausing for owners to pull their distracted, restless dogs back toward their tables so the servers wouldn’t have to step over (or trip over) the dogs’ leashes—but I also wondered: How do these owners not see how they are inconveniencing (at best) or endangering the wait-staff and other diners?
The last straw (for me, personally) was provided by a couple who seemed to be waiting for a take-out order, accompanied by a clearly dog-reactive Husky-mix. They were lurking near the edge of the patio, and every time the Husky caught sight of one of the patio dogs, she would start barking—which would set off a wave of barking and active reactions from the dogs on the patio. Why couldn’t that couple have waited with the dog a few yards farther away, within sight of the restaurant door, but where their dog wouldn’t keep being triggered by the sight of the other dogs (and thus, triggering all the other dogs on the patio to react)? The entire experience was not dissimilar to eating dinner in the kennels at an animal shelter.
Personally, I’m mortified when my dogs do anything in a public setting that could inconvenience or concern other people; for me, it’s an indication that my management and training of my dogs is not as good as it should be in order to have my dogs in public. But none of the people dining on this patio with their dogs seemed to be conscious of their dogs doing anything wrong at all. Perhaps they rationalized that since all the dogs were being loud and obnoxious, theirs wasn’t standing out in any way?
Have you had a bad experience with other people’s dogs in public? Or would you admit it if your dog may have been problematic for people around you?
