"Friendly Dogs"

That's true. I think it's very rude of people to assume that everyone's ok with dogs. I don't know if people realise that it's the law to keep their dogs on a lead or if they just think nobody minds.

I also have a fear of dogs. My kids don't mind them but there are some dogs which are bigger than my baby and it worries me as my baby is quite happy to be dog-licked! I've also been follwed by loose dogs and made it obvious I didn't want them near me but atill they follow!

Well, that's a different situation. Your job involves going to other peoples housing so petting their dog, in their own home, is fair enough. I have a friend who has a few dogs who will always sniff me if I go round. I don't mind that as I know they are there and I know they are clean and friendly. It's those in the street without a lead I have a problem with.

I agree with you. It's the little "ankle-biters" which are the worst. A friend and I agree that, the less like a wolf a dog looks, the less likely we are to trust it! I also wonder how these people allow their children to behave. I may have mentioned this before but I wonder how the dog owners would feel if I allowed my children to jump up them? I had someone tell me their dogs were friendly again very recently and I wondered if the owners had thought about whether I was friendly. For all they know, I could have been really horrible and wanted to hurt the dog, which of course I wouldn't, but they didn't know that, juist as I didn't know that their dogs wouldn't hurt me. Actually, these were the worst kind of dog owners, they had allowed their dogs to roam free on a path through a public park and the owners sat in a car watching them! I didn't even realise the dogs belonged to them until they came out the car to get the dogs!

I think you seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. If a dog doesn't come up to me, that's fine. And yes, I do think that if people can't look after their children properly then they shouldn't have them. The jumping up people thing was just an example. I would no more like children screaming and behaving like brats than I like dogs jumping up me. I wasn't being negative about dogs, I was being negative about the owners of dogs who are allowed to roam free and who claim their dogs are friendly when that makes no difference. I think you have kind of proved my point in a way, you have a dog and think it's ok for you not to keep it on a lead because you believe it will always obey you and won't hurt anyone but you don't like screaming children. So, when I say that people who say their dogs are friendly wouldn't like it if I allowed my children to be annoying in the same way, or a different way, you have proved that's true.