AIBU to want cafes to be dog free after grandchild was bitten?

[OhSoTrue]

What to do? Took my 12 year old gc into a cafe for lunch today, and a dog
snapped her ankle as we walked by. It drew blood. No idea why it picked on her.
She did nothing beyond walking in the door.

The dog owner 'fled the scene' as it were. Made a hasty exit while he had the chance and everyone was looking at the injury.

Wouldn't it just be better if we kept dogs out of what really should be an exclusively human area?

The argument that "they are allowed here so suck it up" is wearing thin.
We are all very fed up of your dogs in human spaces. The vast majority of us would prefer a dog free space.

I feel the same about yucky, screeching kids who won't sit still and prowl around cafes getting in the way of customers and staff. A lot of them smell too!

It would have been helpful if you said this right at the start.
Lots of posters said you should try to track the owner down and wasted their time on that.

Are you in the UK?

Just looking at the time of your posts.

In the UK if a dog bites a child, the dog is destroyed. In other countries it may differ.

My DP was bitten by a dog on his leg. Just a nip but drew blood and he had all the inconvenience of getting a tetanus jab (I hope your GD has had one now?)

Police were involved and the owner visited. She was told that had it been a child, the dog would have been destroyed immediately.

Why be rude about it?
I wouldn't think to ring a restaurant to see if they allow dogs because it shouldn't be the expectation. Dogs shouldn't be in restaurants. It's unsanitary.

We went out for a roast dinner the other week. Due to a dogs excessive barking in the restaurant, it wasn’t an enjoyable experience at all.

Was this your granddaughter or your own child?

You say both- in one post it's a grandchild then another it's your daughter.

And also that you are up all night looking after your daughter (child) who has epilepsy.

If your DD is a child she can't have a child.

Oh bore off. This nonsense is trotted out on every dog thread. And frankly it just shows what a disordered thought process so many have about dogs.

It’s how people without kids see kids, I take it you therefore support not having kids in these places?

This is my problem, I've given it a go and being around barking dogs makes the experience unpleasant no matter how good the food is. I don't feel the same way about children. Children are people and I consider myself part of society with them. I don't feel the same way about people's dogs, they are optional and not for me.

I love dogs and do take my dog to cafes, however it is getting ridiculous. A pub I was in yesterday had dogs at every table. I don’t take mine every time and if I can I do leave her at home. I am also allergic to long haired dogs and had to leave the pub as it was making me sneeze and cough.

I saw a dog in next this week, why on earth do you need to take a dog clothes shopping?

Why do you assume that she even knew the dog was there before it bit the child?

The fact that she knew, or other people updated her, after the child was bitten doesn't mean she knew it was there or that she knew the man by sight. . Most people don't walk into a cafe scanning for dogs under the table, they're engaged in negotiating their way to an unoccupied table.

I have never seen this happen 😂

I was woken at 6:45 on Easter Saturday by a dog barking got nearly 15 minutes outside my bedroom window and I thought that had made me grumpy. If a dog had ruined a meal like that I’d be murderous!

I don’t understand why they’re allowed in clothes shops now. I don’t want to buy an item of clothing covered in dog hair.

We went to Cheshire Oaks and it was just full of people bringing their dogs in and out of clothes shops. At one point there was 6 dogs in Levi’s. Really bizarre. Big dogs too.

Because you've failed to train the dog to cope with being left alone at home. Since most walkers don't seem able to train their dog to walk at heel on a lead these days, it's par for the course and has been since Covid.

Having children is a personal choice. If you choose to have them teach them not to get too close to dogs they don’t know.

That's the problem with a lot of people, they don't think or use the sense they were born with. 🙄

There are plenty of dog free cafes.

in this instance absolutely report to police as the dog shouldn’t be in this position. it’s rare which is why it makes the news.

I also love dogs, and have one myself. But there is not a chance i'm ever taking him to a cafe, restaurant or a bloody shop. I can't dogs in these places. We took Mum out for a birthday lunch the other week, 2 yappy dogs barking their heads off the whole time. And that happens everywhere. I've been in other cafe's were there are so many dogs, the waiting staff are pretty much tripping over them. Just no..

That’s just AI generated shit mate

The anti-dog threads are easily the most bizarre on MN because I simply don't believe 99% of the claims in them.

I neither know nor care whether this particular OP is telling the truth, though the dripfeed about a known biting dog that she nonetheless allowed her grandchild to go near doesn't exactly add to her credibility.

But as a non-dog owner who loves dogs, I would say I spend a disproportionate amount of time and attention in public places looking for dogs, and I'm overjoyed whenever I see them and say hello to them. But I simply do not see dogs biting, jumping, pissing, shitting, and generally making a nuisance of themselves where they shouldn't. 99% of dogs in pubs and cafes sit quietly with their owners; the worst behaviour I see is if they bark at another dog. Often they will do sad puppy eyes at anyone in the vicinity because they're hoping for a treat but they almost never harass other humans physically. 99% of dogs in parks ignore other humans (to my sadness!) because they're more interested in the smell of squirrel or other dogs.

I feel very, very comfortable in saying that the vast majority of dramatic, over-egged MN stories about dogs leaping and jumping and biting and knocking children over are exaggerations, if not outright lies. I do not witness anything of that sort when I'm in public.

When I lived in France shops, hotels, cafes and restaurants allowed dogs. When we moved back to the UK literally nowhere here allowed them. I would be very surprised if France has changed.

After years of sitting outside in the cold and often rain here because we were on holiday with our dog and wanted to eat out it is absolutely brilliant now to be able to sit inside places with him

To say nothing about disordered thought processes some have about kids.!

You sound very bitter, unhappy and intolerant. Fortunately not everyone thinks like you so stop assuming that other people have the same opinion as you. It’s not up to you to say “that’s how WE see you”.
Same as your children and grandchildren are personal choices like you say. Using your wording “it’s your child and you love it, no one else does. To other people they are just a really major fucking nuisance”. Do you think that’s a nice way to think and to speak? If you want your choices to be tolerated then you need to tolerate other people’s choices too

And how do you do that in a cafe if the dog is either hidden under a table or the cafe is small and/or crowded?

And why should anyone have to go out of their way to avoid dogs in public places? Most dogs out in public will not be known to most people.

Can we stop with the victim blaming?