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I am personally extremely tired of seeing random misbehaved non service breeds in red amazon.com vests which say "service dog". It's entitled, disrespectful to

• RajT88 1y ago
  Are you Robocop?
  • absurdo 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • Boogie_Man 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • Analemma_ 1y ago
    The idea that only uniformed officers are allowed to enforce social norms is a major part of what got us into this mess to begin with.
    • TulliusCicero 1y ago
      Major whoosh moment here. The RoboCop reference is clearly because of the phrasing: > "No dogs on the walking path, thank you citizen"
      • TeMPOraL 1y ago
        That has more of a Half Life 2 vibe.
        • antisthenes 1y ago
          Pick up that poop, citizen.
• TulliusCicero 1y ago
  > I also loudly announce "No dogs on the walking path, thank you citizen" at the public park when people ignore posted signs. ??? Having a no dogs allowed rule on a walking path at a park feels so weird to me.
  • Boogie_Man 1y ago
    Walking path at my tennis park is for people only. No dogs, no bikes, and I'm not even allowed to skate it. Personally I'd like dogs only at dog parks but we're not there as a society.
    • KeepFlying 1y ago
      We need to get much safer dog parks. Too many of them are just huge areas of off leash dogs and it's terrible for the dogs involved. It breeds bad play behaviors, dog-dog reactivity, spreads disease between dogs, and encouraged bad owners who just let their dog run free unsupervised. Dogs that spend a lot of time in dog parks are way more likely to behave badly when they see other dogs when they are out for a walk.
      • TulliusCicero 1y ago
        It's so weird for me to see anti dog park talk on the internet because my experience has been very positive with dog parks in general. Almost all the dogs are basically fine, serious behavioral issues are rare. Sometimes dogs get a little too rowdy playing but owners are always quick to step in. I wonder if it's a regional dog owner culture thing (I'm in a suburb of Seattle for reference).
        • KeepFlying 1y ago
          I think it's a side effect of one bad experience being able to cause long term problems like reactivity that takes a long time to work through.
    • colechristensen 1y ago
• stronglikedan 1y ago
  Just goes to show what I've always said: People that hate dogs are just as insufferable as people that think their dogs are people.
  • TeMPOraL 1y ago
    People are insufferable, especially when they're contesting the same shared space over different ways of use. There' no point in hating dogs - or bicycles - they're not the problem, being inconsiderate is. (That's for both sides, though there is a certain asymmetry in those cases. For example, my 4yo kid isn't going to kill an adult cyclist speeding down the narrow path in the park leading directly to the kindergarten, because they're in a hurry or it's some stupid "bicycle May" thing and they're scoring silly points, or something. The reverse however, is very much likely.)
• mtlynch 1y ago
  Honest question: how can you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate therapy dogs if the owner doesn't have a visible handicap? Like what if a veteran struggling with PTSD has a therapy dog to help keep them emotionally regulated? Or is that a fake service animal by your defintion? I agree that people abuse this system, but if you're publicly shaming people, how do you avoid false positives?
  • Boogie_Man 1y ago
    Legit service dogs are legit, go watch footage of them working. I'll probably eventually be wrong someday and have to apologize profusely but that's the risk you run.
  • ameliaquining 1y ago
    Emotional support animals that don't perform a specific task never qualify as service animals; whether the human has any particular diagnosis doesn't matter.
    • mtlynch 1y ago
      Right, but how would one know just from walking by someone in the park whether their support animal performs a specific task?
  • ch4s3 1y ago
    Generally the behavior of the animal is a dead give away. Trained service animals don't wander away from their owners, seek attention from strangers, react to other animals, eat things off of the ground, and will sit directly beside their owners or under a table if so instructed. If you see a dog behaving differently, that dog isn't a trained service animal.
  • KeepFlying 1y ago
    If you're a business ask the two legally permited questions (from the ADA): - Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability? - What work or task has the dog been trained to perform? Most of the time the second question will throw off the fake owners.
• aridiculous 1y ago
  I personally think we have this all wrong, and that all species should have to comply with some level of public decorum to be allowed in public human-dominated spaces. If a dog doesn't make loud noises, physically agitates others, or excessively spread diseases (slobbering all over the place), it seems fine to let them be in the same place. If someone has allergies, an agreement can usually be worked out to create distance, but if it can't we should favor the human. So in a sense, I agree with you: They should have licenses that can be revoked based on their behavior. I don't really care if they're for service reasons or otherwise, I just care they're fit to be in public. Some dogs are, some aren't. Basically, we should be comfortable with fascistic enforcement around dog's behaviorally. That seems like a healthy middle-ground.
• antisthenes 1y ago
  The cringiest hill to die on might be the hill of exaggerated moral panic. There are about 931283918982 more important issues than someone being offended at seeing a dog in close proximity at a place where you have an opinion that they shouldn't be. As long as your pet doesn't come in contact with my food or defecate near it, you really should focus on more important things in life.
  • Boogie_Man 1y ago
    Fallacy of relative privation
    • gatlin 1y ago
      Fallacy fork: https://maartenboudry.be/2017/06/the-fallacy-fork-why-its-time-to-get.html https://maartenboudry.be/2017/06/the-fallacy-fork-why-its-ti...
    • tomhow 1y ago
      Please don't post duplicate comments like this, or just post the name of a fallacy as a response. It lacks substance and detracts from the kind of respectful conversation we're hoping for on HN.
      • Boogie_Man 1y ago
        Sorry Tom. I apologize to the moderators and other posters and will attempt to only post high quality discussion moving forward. I notice that my initial comments are generally high quality but that I feel compelled to respond to everything and something about the increased volume, the thing I'm responding to not being directly something I picked from 30 different articles I read, and the inherent sub-current of challenge to my sometimes obstinate initial comments causes me to get defensive and snippy, and I need to work on that. A simple fix is to not respond to responses, but the edifying fix is to think about why I respond this way (inferiority complex when reading and commenting with generally higher than average internet users and/or not wanting to look stupid in front of the brainy computer people, possibly) to consider this as my bias, and to attempt to counteract it. Thank you for your comment, sorry again.
• darth_avocado 1y ago
  Most of the responses usually devolve into emotional ones, both from dog lovers and dog haters. As a dog owner I support common sense acceptable rules: 1. No dogs in stores that have fresh produce, dairy and meat 2. No off leash dogs in public areas except in dedicated off leash areas 3. No dogs in restaurants indoors 4. Severe penalties if you parade your unbehaved dog as a service dog But at the same time, dog haters keep pushing it to the point where you cannot have dogs beyond the confines of your home (the home cannot be an apartment building). People don’t want dogs in apartments and they don’t want them in ANY public areas. The same people will also oppose dedicated dog parks or ensure these parks are extremely small. Around half the households in the country have a dog. There needs to be a middle ground.
  • lotsofpulp 1y ago
    The problem is “dog” encompasses 20lb to 40lb poodles and shitzus and 60lb to 100lb pitbulls and Rottweilers that can be more dangerous than wild animals that we don’t allow in public. And those with short fur that don’t shed a lot or are less allergenic and those with long fur that cover the whole space with their hairs. My toddle has less rights to exist in a space outside their home compared to a dog capable of severely hurting them (and has many times in the past) specifically bred to be aggressive that does not let go after they bite. This happened to my daughter in the first couple weeks of kindergarten. The class is supposed to line up outside in the morning before the teacher takes them into school, and some mom decided to bring their extremely large pitbull and park it 5 feet away from all the 5 year olds in line. There was no chance this woman would have been able to control her dog, yet she had the right to keep a dangerous animal 5 feet away from my daughter. I told the school to take my daughter inside and keep her away or I was taking her home, and they had my daughter wait inside the office. It makes no sense that any other large animal with similar characteristics as a large pitbull would have been disallowed, but because a pitbull falls under dog, it is allowed.
    • jfengel 1y ago
      Breed and size are less predictive of danger than level of training. An 8 pound Chihuahua can do serious damage if it's badly trained. A properly trained Rottweiler is absolutely bomb-proof. It's certainly capable of more damage, but it won't. Pit bulls are no more dangerous than any other breed. They have a bad reputation because they are popular among dog-fighters, but pit bulls (and pit mixes) make excellent pets -- so long as they are trained. And they're easier to deal with than many working breeds, who quickly become dangerously anxious if you don't give them a job. (Pits, by contrast, are mostly couch potatoes.) All of that said... most dogs do not belong in public, at least in the US. (Some other countries have a longer tradition of dogs in public, and they routinely train their dogs to behave well.) That is even more important in enclosed spaces, where neither you nor the dog can put distance between you if there is a problem. The upshot: find a training class, and take it. The class isn't training your dog; it's training you. You have to take it seriously and do the homework. The dog is not a machine to be programmed by somebody else.