I wasn;t going to come back...but I can;t stop myself...secondcoming you seem to want very specific answers when some of my more general answers actually answer your queries.
"if there were 3 families within say a group of 8 who chose to spend the day together (not joined at the hip but out and about)imagine wanted to go to the pub for lunch could you take a dog?or would that limit the places you could go?"
well, as I've said several times, this is a big group of people. if anyone in the group wants to do something that we can;t do with the dog then we (ie our family, or perhaps just one of us) won't do it. or we'll leave the dog at the house (they can be left you know...we often go out for lunch and such things. people with dogs do stuff like that. and they don;t come back to find the house destroyed or pooed and weed in). same answer for beaches etc. As I said before you're basing your comments on an uninformed and unrealistic view of what life with a dog is like. do you think us dog owners never go out or something?
"you didn't answer my question about those with kids who aren't used to dogs being unable to relax around your animal-is there any reason for ignoring this question?" I didn't answer it because it appeared to be addressed to oneopinionatedmother and/or to people who "ludicrously humanise" their dogs, and not me.
if, in fact, you meant to address it to people who don't do ludicrous humanising then I'll answer it. I don't think my dog is "incapable" of any of those things. biting is, however, unlikely. not impossible, but unlikely. I am always teaching any children who come to our house how to behave with dogs, I don;t leave the dog alone with small children. I take the dog away if children are playing in a way that might over-excite the dog. and I am constantly training the dog as even though he doesn;t jump up you can;t ever stop training them. I am never off my guard - as I don;t expect other people to be. and, in any case, this point is essentially why I started the thread in the first place. at no point have I said that I should be able to impose my dog on my friends.
you are right that we will have to agree to disagree - but you have missed my fundamental point. we're not disagreeing over whether dogs are good or bad. I fully accept that some people think dogs are a bad thing. and I have no fundamental problem with that. what I do have a problem with is generalisations that dog-owners don;t understand that some people don't like dogs, being accused of having no clue about people who don't like dogs by someone who has no clue about people who do.