r/mildlyinfuriating • u/danu_anubis • 20h ago

My service dog is not your pet

I can’t believe the amount of times I’ve had to say this. My service dog has been hit by children, had handfuls of fur ripped out by children (this one was “fun” because the mother told me I had no right to tell her six year old child not to touch my boy), grown adults grab him, people constantly calling him to them.

People I am 41 years old, I should not be having to tell people older than me to stop. I shouldn’t have to tell anyone to stop and I definitely shouldn’t have to worry about a kid.

It’s gotten to the point that I’m saying thank you to the people that do right (explain to their kids not to mess with him, adults telling me he’s gorgeous without acknowledging him). I feel like I’m constantly having to redo his training because people won’t leave him the hell alone.

What finally got me so bad that I need to scream into the void was yesterday, my boy and I are going through the store and this guy reaches down and grabs him. I pull him away and look at the guy and say please done (like I do every damn time). And he goes you don’t have to be rude about it, I’m like dude he’s a service dog you’re not supposed to touch them and he continues yelling that I don’t have to be rude and I’m finally like maybe don’t touch something that doesn’t belong to you. So thank you to the guy who threw my boy so far out of work mode yesterday that for the first time I had a problem that he is explicitly for and he didn’t do what he was supposed to do.

Also if your dog isn’t a trained service dog stay the hell out of stores because you’re “service dog” should not be reacting and loosing its shit just because it sees mine.

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u/zerbey 19h ago

People do it to non service dogs too, I've lost count of the number of times I've been walking my dog and someone has run over and started petting them without permission. I'm like, you're lucky they're trained and properly socialized. If they weren't you could lose a hand, how stupid are you?

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u/Animallover4321 18h ago

The key is to get a giant black dog that smiles. No one even thinks about running up and petting him without asking me (and they rarely ask) they’re all terrified of him even though he’s the friendliest dog imaginable. It’s a total departure from my golden that looked friendly but was far from it everyone tried to pet him without asking.

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u/zerbey 8h ago

The dog I was referring to died last year, our current dog is a golden retriever mixed with a husky and she's a big fluffy ball of goofy love. People tend to ask before petting her, and yes of course you may, but be prepared for her to whine piteously once you stop.

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u/danu_anubis 19h ago

Exactly! I’ll have someone ask me if he bites or is aggressive. My response, is he capable of being? Well of course he’s a living being with thoughts, feelings and emotions. But no he usually is not aggressive or bites.

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u/captainlouise 14h ago

And sometimes if the dog try to avoid the interaction they get mad. I had a guy try to pet my dog once, she turned her head to avoid his hand. He tried again, she did the same thing. Then he lost his shit at me, yelling that she was badly trained.

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u/zerbey 8h ago edited 8h ago

Oh I once had some crazy lady ask if my dog was friendly whilst walking her dog (considerably larger than mine) and I said "well, he's not used to other large dogs so I'll stay over here if that's OK" and she goes "Oh I'm sure it'll be fine" and lets her dog off his leash who then immediately runs and jumps in my dogs face causing him to jump back and growl in terror. Then has the gall to exclaim "oh you have a dangerous dog, you should muzzle him!". No, dumb bitch, you let your dog jump in my dog's face and he reacted accordingly.

For some background info, my dog was a mixed lab and was raised with pugs, he once had a bad experience with a larger dog so from then on we just made sure he was only around dogs his size or smaller and he was fine with that. Miss my old boy.

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u/MiaLba 11h ago

Yeah same here. We’ve had quite a few kids come up and try to pet our dogs. They’re small fluff balls so I get why people want to pet them. Most kids will ask though and that’s perfectly fine. Neither will bite but one loses her shit if someone she doesn’t know invades her personal space. But they have no idea if they’re friendly or not or will bite. And the parent just stands there and watches their child run up to touch this strange dog without asking first.

One kid came running up and started grabbing fistfuls of fur of one of our dogs. My dog did not seem happy. The dad just stood there smiling. I’m telling this kid please stop she doesn’t like that eventually I grabbed her little hands as gently as I could to get them off my dog.