TBH, I’ve kind of lost sight of the original argument now. I’m just amazed at the amount of people happily admitting that they’d hit a dog on the nose.
The nose/muzzle is an incredibly sensitive area on a dog. Their nose is the most important “tool” they have for processing the world around them. And their mouth (and therefore their muzzle) is also their most valuable tool. A dog’s mouth is the equivalent of our hands.
If you have the misfortune of a dog jumping up at you, best thing to do is to just keep walking towards it - no pushing, shoving, kneeing or whatever. Just keep walking, they will get down. I’m obviously talking about over-excitable “greetings”. On the rare occasion of a full on dog attack/bite then it would be different.
But those thinking it’s fine to give a smack to the face are nuts. Because that dog could learn to associate a hand heading towards it (just for a stroke) as being something it needs to protect itself against.
Raising your hand, to someone’s pet in their home, is not on. Pull the owner up by all means - and if they don’t react correctly (which most responsible dog owners would) then remove yourself from their house and reconsider how much you want to visit them again.
In most situations, physical “attacks” on dogs are totally wrong and completely counter-productive. My caveat is in a rare situation where a dog is in full-on attack mode, but that’s not the scenario people are referring to here.
Dogs are sentient beings. As a child, we had a handsome sod that we got from the rescue. He was an amazing family pet. We knew he’d been abused, but he never showed it - he was gently affectionate with everyone. Unless someone with a beard visited. He would then cower and growl lowly from a distance - we very quickly learned to put him in another room if someone with a beard was visiting. Not because we thought he’d attack - the growling is a perfect warning sign. But because it was better for him to not see the bearded person, it obviously distressed him re the abuse he’d gone through.
Basically - don’t hit dogs, don’t swipe cats off of surfaces that aren’t in your own home and don’t try to manipulate children into doing something they’re not comfortable with.