The hysteria around the existence of dogs is something I’ve only ever come across on MN.
With the exception of children who have actually been bitten by a dog, IME the majority of children’s fear of dogs has been fuelled by the parents’ hysterical reaction to them. There seems to be this thought process on MN that every dog is an aggressive monster just waiting to tear their children apart, unprovoked, when this is far from the truth.
Yes of course there have been dog attacks in the news recently, but you only have to look at what kind of dogs these are, not your average family pet, although everyone who talks about not wanting to have their children around their family member’s dog will tell you that it’s an xl bully, because of course everyone has one these days.
Honestly this talk of dying from anxiety because there is a “big scary dog” (even though you know nothing about the dog) is part of the problem here.
If you have diagnosed anxiety then you need to seek more help for it.
If you’re just throwing anxiety around then you need to stop because it’s an over used which means that people with genuine, diagnosed anxiety are no longer taken seriously by the majority of the population, because everyone seems to have anxiety when actually some people are a bit nervous/temporarily anxious.
And you need to get your children used to dogs, and not feed what is probably not a fear at all.