I have seen far more badly behaved children in cafes than dogs. Also parents just letting their kid run riot whilst they scroll on their phone
So have I and it's annoying to be sure. Some parents need to have lessons in parenting.
But that's not what this is about. It's about dogs causing discomfort and disruption in cafes. I'd rather have the kids than the dogs. The kids, whilst being unruly and annoying, won't approach me or slaver on me or growl at me, or give me need to have to step over them. No child, in any cafe I've ever been in, has dripped saliva whilst staring at me, or shaken themselves sending clouds of fur and dander into the air. Any dog near me generally emits a nasty smell which is unpleasant around food. Dog owners will deny that their dogs smell, I know, but they really do. Claiming a comparison between dogs and children is utterly ridiculous and the last resort of dog owners who know that they're down to their last, failing, argument. There are, however, dog owners who genuinely feel that their dogs are just as important as any human child and that's what we're seeing here.
I have actually confronted (or supported a waitress who was confronting) a customer whose child was wandering round a fish and chip restaurant and ended up in the kitchen with the frying pans etc all around. Waitress was very young and they were giving her a hard time about her asking them to keep the child, about 3 years old, sitting. I and my husband stood up and said like how dangerous it was etc. It all settled down in the end.
I've also been in a situation sitting outside a pub when a young man was having a pint and letting his two pit bulls wander around. Nobody wanted to confront him. Certainly not me. Who knows what a dog, any dog, is going to do if you look like you're at odds with their owner? Most dogs are harmless. Some are not.
There are millions of dog attacks annually. Wetherspoons briefly allowed dogs into their pubs early 20s and immediately suffered dozens of dog bites to their staff so had to wind that back. There are tens of millions of dog bites reported annually.
Just imagine how many go unreported, especially within families.
A blanket ban on dogs in pubs and cafes would at least halve those figures.
Outside a pub, in the garden, fine. Although I have witnessed a right massive old dog fight outside a pub in Cornwall with 2 families who had 3 dogs each.
Blood was spilt and injuries requiring an emergency vet and the entire occupants of the garden running inside for cover.
You don't get that with rowdy kids, do you? They're just bloody annoying.
Not a single undisciplined toddler has been responsible for the mauling and death of a grandparent or sibling, or inflicted an infected bite on an innocent passer by.
I don't hate dogs. I like some dogs. As a child, we had a dog or two.
I loved my dogs and they appeared to love me, and I gave them great affection
and they reciprocated. I had many late night conversations with my lovely doggie when I'd had a bad day. I did not, however, make my dog the be all and end all of my existence. She was a dog.
But Bloody Hell! What the feck has happened!? Nobody in the 80s would have dreamt of taking a dog into a cafe. It's a dog ffs. Not a people.
My brother used to be a keen hiker, took the dog with him, and he was welcomed into all the country pubs obviously. That's where you saw dogs and that was where you saw 'most' dogs in pubs. But trotting into John Lewis to 'try a coat on'. Well that's where the dog people have lost me. It's just bloody ludicrous. I can't even. . . .