Animal Magnetizism

I work a service dog in public. Have for the better part of a decade now. Having the dog help me means my life is vastly improved. Having the dog in public means that I draw comments and attention I would not otherwise.

I went to WorldCon with a bright blue pixie cut. 4 comments on my hair, literally thousands on Keeper. For context, that is 4 comments on things that I did for fun and because I enjoy it, and would have enjoyed talking about it. Thousands of distractions while my disoriented, disabled self is trying to navigate across a convention hall that's several blocks long, through hundreds or thousands of people in the hallways. It's a chaotic environment and I'm fielding questions and comments at a steady rate of several a minute.

These people are polite, for the most part. I only had one person try to pet without asking, and only a few blatantly expressed disappointment when they asked and I told them no. We've gotten very good about doing a side-step maneuver so when the unthinking (or the assholes) stop dead in front of Keeper and reach for her face, we don't break stride and I don't fall down or have muscle spasms.

I have had people in cars stop so I'm trapped on a walkway to talk to me about the dog. I've had people say "go pet the doggy!" and sic their children on me. I've had rookie K9 handlers stop me in the grocery store to ask about dog training.

Most of the time it is not malicious- they're not trying to point out that I'm disabled. They don't know what my issues are or what my dog is trained to do, how we work as a team so I can get out of the house. They don't understand that I want to be seen for myself, not the president of Keeper's fan club. Some assume I'm only training the dog because I can still walk. They just see a dog and act the way they're used to acting around pet dogs.

It is exhausting. It is frustrating. It is inescapable.

And this is my reality. People don't respect the normal social boundaries because they see a dog, they want to pet it, and my needs are the farthest thought from their mind. It is a candid admission that they don't see me as a real person- or they'd ignore me as they ignore everyone else in the store. Because I'm no longer a real person, my runs to the grocery store for milk and eggs is better done at 2am when there's no one rather than at 2pm when some old woman will cut me off with her cart and tell me stories about her dead dog. Yes, I can and have turned around and gone back out of the aisle, but it costs me time and energy that is physically precious and some days hard to come by.

Dealing with these interactions is part of working a service dog in public. The extra attention, the extra time to dodge people, is a constant. Some disabled individuals stop using their dogs and stop going out because it's overwhelming, or it's not worth the help the dog provides when they have other alternatives.

Me, personally, I don't have good options for all the things my dogs are trained to do. So I deal with it as best I can. But that doesn't mean that having someone go "hey, puppy!" doesn't annoy me, or that having them make kissy noises and get louder as they call my dog again because she is ignoring them (just like I trained her to) doesn't piss me off. It's a dog in a library with "SERVICE DOG" in 2 inch high letters. The signals are there. People ignore them. And that's with the benefit of the doubt that they don't know that calling my dog out from under me could cause me to fall and be injured.

If you see a service dog, please ignore them. I know that's hard for dog lovers, and I know we're almost as rare as a unicorn in your life, but you likely aren't the first... or the fifth... or the fortieth person to say something.