Well yes, I've been in far more life-or-death situations with dogs than humans, and they give me panic attacks.
On multiple occasions I had a group of dogs chasing me on a mountain road while I was on my bike with trucks on one side and a cliff on another.
Don't fault me, I had every right to be there in peace, and enjoy my bike ride. No wild animal bothered me, just the goddamn dogs.
I don't want dogs anywhere near me.
And yes, statistically they are far more dangerous than bears, mountain lions, and wolves combined, in terms of both injuries and deaths, even if you exclude rabies cases.
Dogs were bred to fearlessly attack anything unknown and that's exactly what they do.
Wild animals, on the other hand, generally fear the unknown and stay away from it.
Dogs chase people and things for many reasons. Almost always it’s for play. If a dog has its ears and tail up, it’s looking to play with you, not tear you to pieces. Dogs have clear signals and behaviours that need to be understood.
> Dogs were bred to fearlessly attack anything unknown and that's exactly what they do.
This is completely untrue and the complete opposite of how dogs evolved. Dogs were domesticated to live among humans in harmony. If you experience a poorly behaved dog, it’s the owner at fault. Some owners mistreat their dogs and/or raise them with poor social habits, causing the dog to behave aggressively towards humans. It’s learned distrust, for which you have people to blame. Good owners will treat their dogs well. Such dogs will not attack another person unless their owner is being physically harmed. I don’t know if you’re living in America, most dogs in North American society come from well-adjusted homes where people treat them as members of the family.
You can learn how to make friends with any dog. It can be taught. The fear you experience is learnt and can be unlearnt.
I'm generally fine with dogs, but the typical American dog owners' entitled attitudes do get a bit grating. And when one's approaching one of my kids without a leash or a hyper-attentive owner (which is extremely common, even on kids playgrounds where they're not allowed to be off-leash), it makes my blood pressure spike. The most recent time, it was just to eat my kid's cookie, but I've heard too many direct anecdotes to just be chill about it.
No, fuck that. Being chased on a mountain road is life-threatening and it's the dog's fault, not mine. Literally no other animal does this, they are nuisances.
> If a dog has its ears and tail up, it’s looking to play with you, not tear you to pieces. Dogs have clear signals and behaviours that need to be understood.
No, fuck that. In MY language:
mellow purring = friendly
barking = threat
Period. If it barks, I will bark back and assert my dominance, followed by pepper spray and rocks if it continues to approach and threaten.
If I move away or yell at an animal, that means NO and do NOT follow me. Almost all other animals including cats usually understand CONSENT and what "NO" means very well.
> If you experience a poorly behaved dog, it’s the owner at fault.
Well, 90% of dogs I've encountered don't have owners and many of them threatened me. Often in packs. The few dogs I've met that have owners, at least half of them were very badly behaved.
100% of bears and coyotes I've encountered don't have owners either, and to this date every single one I encountered has left me alone.
> You can learn how to make friends with any dog.
I really just do not want to. Like most cats and porcupines, I really just want to be left alone by dogs. That's my choice, and I want to be respected and dogs to respect that I do not wish to be approached, sniffed, barked at, or chased.
I'm more than happy making friends with other animals, and do not need dogs in my life at all.
> If I move away or yell at an animal, that means NO and do NOT follow me. Almost all other animals including cats usually understand CONSENT and what "NO" means very well.
Are you seriously…expecting “packs of wild dogs without owners” to understand “consent” and “no”? I mean I get in your experience your not going to be trustworthy of the animals, but if you are encountering wild dogs, they by definition are not domesticated and likely not to be all that familiar with commands and human behaviors. They know 3 things…eat, procreate, and protect the pack. If you are barking at wild dogs and asserting your dominance in their territory, you are a threat…and it’s no wonder they would act aggressively.
> Are you seriously…expecting “packs of wild dogs without owners” to understand “consent” and “no”?
Yes. Almost EVERY other animal understands that if you stomp, roar, hiss, and yell at them that you don't consent to be approached. This is common instinctive language across all animals. Most wild animals will just leave you (and anything unknown) alone in the first place. Even the most fierce predators don't go around attacking random shit for the hell of it unless they are actually hungry.
Dogs aren't a natural species, they were bred by humans and bred to be something that evolution would have never naturally created.
> Even the most fierce predators don't go around attacking random shit for the hell of it unless they are actually hungry.
That is incorrect. Some predators do. You do, and you are not random. You are a threat on their territory and by your own admission, an aggressive threat with no respect for them as a pack or their territory.
It seems many people build their identity on liking dogs. So if you say anything remotely negative about dogs, these people feel personally attacked and act accordingly.
One who does not like dogs is at least weird to them, if not outright evil. I hear it is the worst in the US, but it gets increasingly common here as well.
Some of them will try everything to get more dogs involved, including: classroom pets, pets in offices, fake emotional support animals. I wonder if they also manipulate studies like in TFA...
Gaslighting is not welcome here. You might be lucky. Your words come off as essentially arguing that just because you haven't experienced X that the problem is not significant. Many people attempt to use logic like this for X={racism, sexism, ...} but it applies to other things including traumatic interactions with dogs.
Also, there are plenty of people I know with the same experiences as me.
How on earth are you calling my comment gaslighting? I merely pointed out that both of our examples are a single person‘s data point, and we cannot draw broad conclusions from them.
I don't think being chased by packs of dogs on several dozen instances in at least 5 countries counts as a single data point.
Maybe dogs hate the way I smell and love the way you smell but that doesn't make it right.
I do carry defenses (rocks, pepper spray) to deal with the situation and avoid injury but having to be on guard for dogs at every second and ready to pull out these things on a moment's notice is NOT a pleasant way to cope.
I said it’s a single person‘s data point. And it is. You’re hypersensitive on this issue. Clearly you know the math and the statistics to know what one persons experiences mean to drawing conclusions.
I respect your wish not to feel threatened and I tried to show that, no need to make incorrect replies.
I'm an American dog lover, and was surprised when all of my Vietnamese-family-by-marriage voiced similar perspectives. Stray dogs were a serious, common threat that could kill you.
If we were to believe your comments, there would be wild packs of dogs all over. Do you have any stats to back this up? I hike all of the time in the US and only wild pack of animals I have encountered is coyotes. Are you confusing coyotes with dogs?
I have to say it is less of a problem while hiking. Coyotes do leave me alone. It's much more of a problem if walking, running, or bicycling through suburban areas. Yeah, I know, Americans (especially those living in massively gentrified areas) tend to just tell me I shouldn't do these activities and get in an SUV instead, but that's not how most of the world wants to live.
> in the US
Yeah, the US isn't the world. This might be why you haven't seen how dogs can be a huge problem. The US isn't representative of the stray dog problem that plagues very large parts of the world, including eastern Europe, east and southeast Asia, Middle East, central America, and sub-saharan Africa.
> know, Americans (especially those living in massively gentrified areas) tend to just tell me I shouldn't do these activities and get in an SUV instead
Cut the shit, you don’t know anything about the US based on your own comments. I talked about hiking because animal encounters are even less of a problem when walking in neighborhoods/cities. Nobody said anything about riding in an SUV.
It sounds like your problem isn’t with domesticated dogs then and is with feral ones instead. You do know this entire conversation and article is not about wild dogs right?
If you read the article and not just the title, the majority of the discussion is using dogs for diagnostics of collected samples. They (for that use) would not be around patients like you so wouldn’t trigger your allergies.
Sure, I get the allergies argument, especially if the reaction is a deadly one. It’s a good reason to avoid dogs. I have an allergy too, although not to dogs. It’s not EpiPen level, but I do keep a bottle of Benadryl handy at all times. I totally get the life or death vibe.
But calling dogs killers because one is allergic to them is a bit disingenuous no? People are allergic to many things. It’s not the thing that’s the problem, rather the individual body’s overreaction in the presence of the thing. The problem is with the body, not the allergen, wouldn’t you agree?
