I like dogs like I like toddlers. It's fun to hang out with other people's for a while, but ultimately they're annoying, loud, and make a mess. I feel like in the past 10 years or so, dog owners have become increasingly convinced that everyone thinks their slobbering, untrained mutt is god's gift to everyone, and expects everyone to love it unconditionally. Dogs in restaurants. Dogs in stores when you go shopping.
"Oh it's so funny that your dog is jumping on me and getting it's dirty paws all over me while it tries to sniff my crotch."
"Oh oops! Your dog ate my food off the counter, fucking again. Guess that's my fault because in this house nothing is safe from the coddled fucking dog."
"Hey man can you watch the dog? It's really easy, not like it pisses all over the floor and knocks the trash over or anything. We have to leave the house for 2 hours and it has anxiety/depression/borderline personality disorder and he's a wittle special boy who needs constant attention."
I'm just tired of it. Nobody gives a goddamn about your stupid dog. Stop bringing your animal to restaurants, it's disgusting and inconsiderate. It's not your child, it's a dog. Dog people have made me hate dogs.
I love dogs but when I was NYC I couldn't wrap my head around why there were so many dogs in Manhattan. My dogs need space and room to run around which isn't something Chelsea Village et al. are known for.
Oh don't get me started, I was on the elevator with a guy in NYC who had two beautiful huskies. Yeah, your little one bedroom is perfect for them dude.
Every sidewalk in Manhattan is a bathroom for dogs. The street smell like pee from the humans, and mostly from the dogs. Cuz there's no space for them anywhere else. Dogs are not designed for the city
That can probably be remedied by adding more green space in the cities. Luckily, this is something that should already be done for a plethora of reasons. There's usually a decent amount of fat that can be cut in parking spaces and road width to accomplish it, which would also make the cities more pleasant by discouraging car use.
You're absolutely right, and that's an excellent thing to do. But it wouldn't change the sidewalks becoming bathrooms for dogs. When people live in the big city, and the dog needs to go out, they're not walking to the park, they're going outside 5 m from the door dog is going to do its business and they're going right back inside. Doubly so in winter.
Walking around high density residential complexes in Manhattan is just a really terrible experience. Especially once winter ends
What I did when I had a dog was that I trained it to only use patches of grass or trees as places to go to the bathroom, and she kept quite well to this, barring the very rare emergency. Luckily, the city where I live has plenty of greenery interspersed with the regular streetscape, so this was not a challenge to enforce with the dog in the city center.
Yeah, I think it's cruel to keep a dog in a small space like a city apartment. My dogs have a dog door and can go outside in our big yard and run around to their heart's content. I don't want to live in a house without a dog door at this point, let alone an apartment. It's amazing how happy it makes them. When we got my newest dog (we usually have 2 at a time), he saw the dog door and was so happy. He just ran straight through it and out into the yard. These dogs in studio apartments in New York, especially the big ones, must be so sad.