I take my consent from the dog. You’re its caretaker, friend, and family. None of that means the dog’s incompetent to decide and communicate desire to be touched.
edit: I should be more clear. I ask for permission from the owner. I say “Can I say hi to your dog?”
Then I say hi by putting my hand out to smell. Then if the dog wants a pet, I’ll pet the dog.
Permission to approach from the owner, but consent to pet from the dog.
And while not explicitly stated in those exact terms, that's probably EXACTLY what this sign is for. But they probably cover their legal bases if they say sll dogs, in case a non-service dog bites them. Then the airport has a sign "What did we JUST say???"
I work at a different airport, and while I can't say I've ever seen a dog attack someone, I CAN say I've seen people get so drunk that they take off all their clothes at the bar. Then get arrested for "singing kareoke onstage". Except there's a few key pieces of information. First off, they had no stage. She was just naked singing while standing on top of the bar. Like it was coyote ugly. Also, the bar didn't have a kareoke machine, it had a keno display. And there wasn't even any music playing. She just got up on the bar naked and starts a drunk rendition of "allstar" followed by most of "walking on the sun" by smash mouth before the cops showed up and arrested her. Bonus points to the cops for letting her get off the bartop on her own. She used a bar chair to get down, and the top of the chair swivels. So she fucks it up, the chair swivels, and she eats the ground HARD. Like.....pretty sure she had a concussion after that. She was definately bleeding from the back of her head. As someone who has a lot of downtime, and just people watches, that was definately my favorite day for people watching.
Entertaining story aside, my point is.....people are dumbasses. She never got to the point to even try to board the plane, but I assure you, she would have been denied. And she's not alone. Most people keep their clothes on, but a LOT of people (looking at you, spirit, and frontier passengers) drink WAAAAAAAY too much.
So I could fully see a situation where a drunk guy insists on petting a dog that doesn't want to be touched by a drunk guy. I could then understand why a dog would then bite him. And now we understand this sign.
It’s probably for bomb sniffing dogs, I’ve seen those at JFK and LAX along with those signs in the past. Like right near the cordoned off walkway they have set up for them to walk near everyone in line.
Clever Hans (German: der Kluge Hans; c. 1895 – c. 1916) was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer. He discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.
AFAIK they don’t use those in airports, at least not in the domestic flight area. I could see it being used at customs or something, although I think even in customs they usually have dogs sniffing for agricultural concerns like plants and seeds rather than drugs. The dogs you see near security theater checkpoints screening areas are all bomb sniffing dogs AFAIK.
Yeah they don’t need drug dogs in airports. If they don’t like the look of you they can just search your bags without the made up cause of a drug dog “trigger”.