A Sense of Entitlement

Quick quiz: you are walking down the street and someone (a stranger to you) with a dog is walking towards you. The dog is calm and appears well-behaved, and both he and the owner are minding their own business. You love dogs, of course (yours is not with you at the moment). What should you do?

A: Start squealing in a high-pitched baby voice at the dog while moving towards it with your hands outstretched. If it's small enough, go right over and pick it up, then kiss it. If it’s a big dog, bend over it and kiss it.

B: Start cooing in a sing-song voice, stop, bend over and wait for the dog to get close, then try to pet it.

C: Squat down, talking sweetly to the dog, and wait until it comes to you, then let it sniff your hand, and pet it.

D: Ask the owner if you can pet the dog, and then do C.

E: None of the above. It's not your dog, and you don't have a right to pet it. Smile at the owner, say, "cute puppy!" and continue walking.

Did you choose (D)?

The correct answer is (E).

What? Did I just tell you to pretty much ignore a dog on the street, even though it's adorable and you clearly love dogs?

Sigh. I did.

Would you walk up to a stranger and pet their child on the head? Would you touch them? Would you walk up and grab someone's bike, or phone, or dress, and admire it? If the person with the dog was walking without his dog, would you stop him, touch his arm, and interact with him, just because? Why not?

Because it would be rude.

When you go to pet someone's dog, someone who has not explicitly asked you to interact with the dog, you are making an assumption, and you put the owner in a tough spot. If they refuse you, you will think them rude. Why is that?

Dogs are not public property, despite the apparent eagerness of many to be social. If you would feel hurt that someone wouldn't allow you—lover of all dogs--to pet their pup, you need to look at your assumptions--and your desires. 

Because wanting to pet that dog is your desire, your want. It's all about you. It doesn't take the dog, or his human, into account at all.

Just because your dog loves people, and just because you love dogs, that doesn't grant you the right to interact with others' dogs without explicit permission.

If their dog is sketchy around strangers, they don't want you to try and pet it (and you shouldn't want to!). Telling them, "It's ok! Dogs love me!" as you approach and as their dog clearly turns away from you (or growls or barks at you) is not OK. Continuing to approach a dog that is barking in a threatening manner, instead of backing off, is not OK.

If their dog is in training, they may be concentrating on that, and following the advice of a professional to prevent others from touching the dog (I give this advice a lot to my students).

If their dog is too social, and will jump all over you, they may be embarrassed about this and trying not to encourage it. Even the dog that is clearly straining to be petted belongs to someone who may not want him to be doing that.

Please don't put people in an awkward position. You would blame them if the dog bit you (or scratched you in his exuberance), when in fact it would be your fault if you invaded his space. Some dogs just are not social with strangers, and you believing yourself “good with dogs” doesn't imbue you with some magical force that makes it OK. In fact, if you are actually “good with dogs,” you’d never try to pet one you didn’t know—especially one who was clearly sending signals that he didn’t want to be petted.

(People who are “good with dogs” don’t typically announce this fact. They act in ways that dogs understand to be non-threatening. It’s not magic—it’s experience. And practice.)

I don't allow people to pet my dogs when I'm out. They don't care for attention from strangers, and often, we are in training. I never foist myself upon dogs I see in passing. I smile and compliment them, and go home to love on my dogs, because each of us knows and trusts the other. I love dogs, yes, but because I love them, I don’t have a searing need to interact with every one I see--especially uninvited. Self-control around dogs takes some practice, but you can do it.

I once entered a pet supply store with my dog, who I was training. I needed to buy something, and I wanted to work my dog around the distractions of the store while I was doing it. Everything was fine, and my dog was doing quite well, until one of the clerks spotted us. She literally started squealing and following us around the store (I started moving quickly away, on purpose) with her hands outstretched.

My dog was looking to me for help to get him away from this crazy person, and I could not shake her. I finally had to stop, put my dog in a stay behind me, and block her approach like a soccer goalie. She finally asked if she could touch him, and I said no, not rudely, but with conviction. She got her feelings hurt, sure enough (not my intention at all), and probably told her co-worker how rude I was as we left without buying anything, both of us breathing a sigh of relief upon stepping out into the sunlight.

My job was to protect my dog, and I did.

NOTE: I’m not an absolutist. Life is full of shades of gray. Many dogs love people, and want to approach them, and belong to people who are trying to socialize them, and can handle your greetings properly. Many people don’t mind if you pet their dogs. In fact, some may ask you to. Some may even become offended if you don’t touch their dogs! If you meet such people with such dogs, see option D above. And enjoy!

Otherwise, please keep moving.

Roll the Bones

I remember being about 9 years old and accompanying my mom to the local Ben Franklin "Five and Dime" store. I believe the company is gone now (though a few stores may still exist in small towns by that name), but younger and more urbanly hip readers are familiar with the concept of the "dollar" store, now seen almost everywhere.

It's not the same. Maybe I have a selective memory, but today's "dollar" stores seem riddled with cheap depressing crap no one really wants (including the manufacturer), while variety stores from my youth had cheap crap a lot of people actually wanted, and used.

The Ben Franklin at our local strip mall was one of my very favorite places to go. I remember buying those balsa wood airplanes every summer, and I still have a fondness for their incredibly simple, rubber-band propellor technology today. And the store itself wasn't large, but it was dark and cool, and Mom would let me wander to decide what trinket I needed to have that very minute. Meanwhile, she bought sewing notions, a hook-and-eye loop for the screen door, a turkey lifter, and a plunger. Was there something the store didn't have? It seemed to my child's imagination that Ben Franklin had tons of stuff.

But not as much stuff as one can find at most every store today. And therein lies the problem. We simply have too many choices. And having too many choices can leave us overwhelmed and anxious.

I wish I could explain this as well as Cath Duncan does in this blog post. But I can't. So go read it, and come back. Because it relates to choosing a pet.

How having too many choices relates to pet acquisition

To paraphrase Cath's post, we use our left-brain to weigh the pros and cons of daily choices, and this works well for us, unless there are too many choices. Then, we start second-guessing our choices, which actually, according to Dan Gilbert, reduces our happiness. It seems weird, but from a personal standpoint, I can totally relate.

And it can affect all parts of our lives, even down to the pet we choose in an animal shelter. Oddly, I had always thought this was because of our pesky emotions, which definitely play a part in our decisions when it comes to animals. But Cath points out that using our emotions can help when there are too many choices. I don't have hard scientific evidence to prove my hypothesis, but when the shelter at which I work is at full capacity for adult dogs, adoptions plateau, then start falling off. Price or perceived value becomes moot (because many shelters lower prices when this happens, in an attempt to "move the merchandise"), and many "lookers" actually leave having truly only looked.

If you asked people as they were leaving why they didn't adopt a pet today, "you had too many to choose from" would not be their answer. I suspect it's unconscious, actually. They felt overwhelmed, but they don't really know why.

When a number of cages are left empty, adoptions increase. There are other factors that play into it, too: weather, the economy, time of year, how many black dogs are in the shelter, and the animals' behavior, to name a few. How clean the place is also affects adoptions, and the more dogs that reside there, the harder it is for staff to keep the shelter clean.

Overall, it does seem to hold true that too many choices of potential pets will stymie the "average" adopter. It's bad enough when you are looking at cans of tomato sauce, or brands of toilet paper, but when you throw homeless pets into the choice pools, people's already frazzled emotions take a huge hit.

(I will explore this emotional link regarding shelters in a future post. I've got lots of theories about it.)

It is often said that life was easier "back in the day" (an idea that minorities would vehemently disagree with), in part because there weren't more than a couple of choices we faced every day. I can see how this might have been true. From brands of products to how to live our lives, not having to analyze everything must have been a relief.

Technology has improved our lives immensely, but at what price? If adoptions decrease when one has too many dogs to pick from, then dogs stay in the shelter longer, which increases the chances that stress will degrade their behavior and health--even in the best-run facilities.

That doesn't mean adopters should make uninformed choices, but the opposite of that is not making a choice at all. And Neil Peart very brillantly had something to say about that.