UNHINGED woman screaming at me for “putting my dog in boot”

What?!? My beloved dog travels in the boot as a matter of course. He has a bed in there and a dog guard fitted to the rear seats by Halfords to prevent him jumping over. He has a seatbelt attachment that would enable him to sit on the rear seat securely, but he doesn't like it and prefers the boot. In actual fact, I adopted his predecessor from The Dogs Trust - they will not allow you to take home your adopted dog in a car unless you have a seatbelt attachment OR a boot dog guard - similarly the Blue Cross, from which I adopted my present sidekick. So they advocate secure boot travel.

A lot of my colleagues (farm and country park rangers) have canine colleagues. It is workplace policy that these dogs travel securely in the boots of work vehicles.

Police dogs travel in secure crates in the boots of the squad cars.

This lady was, indeed, entirely unhinged. Any posts she makes on social media are likely to highlight her utter wingnuttery to whoever sees them and should reflect on you only as a caring and responsible dog owner.

Edited - I didn't appreciate it was a closed-boot situation. But I stand by my view on her nuttiness. If she'd filmed you actually shutting the boot on a whimpering and trembling dog - well, OK. But it will have been obvious what you were doing. Plenty of people towel off their dogs in the boot before putting them in the main part of the car. Or even their small children - I can remember my brother and I being sat on the back of the car coming back from the beach when we were little, while mum or dad towelled the sand off our legs and feet. Some people are determined to be angry. Don't let them get to you @Brouge x

I remember walking a friend's whippet once and some woman stopped me and told me I was starving my dog and ought to be reported.

I suspect it might have been her first day out in public. I wouldn't worry, OP. For every vigilante who will join her in her ranty outbreaks, there will be fifty people who will shrug and think how over the top she is. Even if she posts it on a local Facebook page, you would be ASTONISHED at how few people care.

Better to towel them in a boot, than outside thus having to contain their inevitable zoomies 🤣

I know, I do worry about these people when it's like 15C out and I've left the dog to go and get a parking ticket or to go into the Spar.

Also people going on about hot pavements. Barbara, it has been 20C for two days now, the tarmac is not going to be melting my dog's paws.

There are some very strange people out there. I expected to be put on SM a couple of years ago when I completely accidentally drove a bit too close to a horse - I didn’t even know it was there because it was behind a bend in the road. The man on the horse and the woman leading him screamed and shouted and gesticulated at me and I had to turn round and go back past them because I’d missed my turning. I stopped on the other side of the road and asked them what the problem was, and while the woman continued to scream and shout at me, the man walked the horse over to my car and kicked the car. It was bizarre and upsetting, but I figured that if they put me on SM then the video they took would be of them going completely bananas while I spoke to them calmly. Don’t worry about it OP.

I reckon she was having some sort of mental episode. What a weirdo.

You have to wonder if these people ever wonder how dogs survive in places like Australia and the Middle East.

Some people are just so wired they go around all day looking for fights.

Agree, You do notice this on MN - people are so quick to leap (even typos), and so many have to make snarky "FFS" or "FGS" type ejaculations about someone else's post.

It's just totally unnecessary.

Christ on a bike! Does no-one read a thread anymore?

Yes, a saloon boot is 'separate' but as others have confirmed, in many or most saloons you can still fold the seats down so the boot is open to the rest of the car. Not a closed box.

She’d hate us, ours travels in a crate in the back of our pick up truck (with the hard top on, obviously!)
A saloon boot like the one in the picture is obviously too small to travel a dog in without removing the parcel shelf (which you’ve said you can’t) but you weren’t going to do that - she’s obviously nuts! Don’t give it another thought

You mean you didn't collect your dog in a chauffeur driven limousine with on board canine physical therapist to help him recover from his walk?

Lack of oxygen.

But I see people drying their dogs in the boot all the time op. At the beach you sometimes even see small children being changed in the boot.

If you were not driving it's a non issue: no-one will take any notice.

Fgs, have you never seen a saloon car? The boot's a closed box.

Yes she’s bonkers.
given your boot design obviously I wouldn’t travel a dog in there. I think people are confused by you saying it’s completely separate and therefore unacceptable- for instance our pick up has a separate boot and the dogs travel happily in very posh crates in there. But a Saloon car boot isn’t the same at all!

If i didn't do anything wrong in the first place no don't care what people say about me, I dont need to protest I'm innocent if I was not doing anything wrong

My dog sits in the footwell between my feet when the whole family are in the car. She has space under the seat to stretch out or she curls into a ball and sleeps (often on my coat).

Obviously a dog shouldn’t be shut into an enclosed boot, but I think people generally are becoming way too precious about dogs and think of them as babies…causing this batshit behaviour to come out!

You wouldn't be upset if people were talking about you on a public platform where your friends/family/work/ransoms can see?

I don't even see why a dog can't travel in the boot- it isn't air tight, people crate dogs for hours, space to stretch out, contained

She's a nutter, an awful nutter. Far too many of them about these days. Sorry OP, hopefully that's your quota of meeting nutters done for a long time.

This. Although I would actually create a FB account and then as soon as she posts, I would post the ACTUAL version of events with a massive NOW FUCK OFF YOU NOSY COW at the end 😀

Just as well she didn't see me sitting my daughter in the boot at the beach to get the sand off her feet or she would have combusted.

My sentiments exactly, just move on with life OP, don't give nut job anymore head space, not worth it.

You clearly weren't at fault. If it helps I suspect I may have behaved occasionally like this madwoman at the beginning of perimenopause before I discovered HRT. I was quite literally forced to take HRT due to the fear of being arrested for my bizarre and quite out of character behaviour. I hope I didn't do anything to make anyone worry about it like you are but I definitely screamed at strangers on more than one occasion, however once the moment had passed I dropped it and would never have posted anything online about it later. It was literally occasional mad moments. Did she look around that age to you?

Oh and I apologise for anyone who may have come across me in real life at that time!😖 It wasn't much fun for me either.

Some people are just so wired they go around all day looking for fights. We used to have a rescue dog - likely half husky half golden retriever so a gorgeous blonde fluffy husky who had a few anxiety issues and verbalised a lot, definitely had suffered abuse before he was abandoned.

He used to get very excited on walks and pull and make husky sounds that sound a bit like complaining. We consulted a dog trainer and got a few tips so we would do things like when he was pulling me over I would stand on the lead and wait for as long as it takes for him to calm down - I would often also hold one of his ears as apparently it calms dogs. So one day I was standing there, stood on his lead, gently holding the ear as the dog yowled and pulled and had a woman approach and start screaming at me for abusing the dog. She claimed I was hitting the dog - her rational was that although she hadn’t seen me do it she knew because of the way the dog was yowling and pulling - she called the police who refused to come (likely not her first rodeo). She followed me for about 15minutes screaming at me - she was a young girl in her 20s.

They did a study where they monitored brain waves while getting people to say negative things and found that it actually alters people’s brain waves and they are then left more predisposed to having negative thoughts. Some people leave their houses prepared to get angry at something!

Oh this dog exclusively rode in boots, he would scramble and get anxious on the car seats so we put him in the boot (hatch back) removed the top and he would hang his head over the car seat and howl the whole way down the motorway - we avoided taking him anywhere lol.

I had my lab in the boot of my Renault Clio all the time. No parcel shelp obvs .
For long journeys too. No seats down as kids / luggage in the back seats . Stopped regularly for him to drink and stretch his legs.
He could lie down and he had a soft bed in there . As he aged , he did require lifting in and out (died age 13 )
OMG ! SO glad I was not reported to RSPCA!

Perhaps OP means not on social media such as fb. I'm not either and my life is okay with out it, maybe she's like me and not interested. I don't regard MN the same as fb and the rest of it.