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  "description": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMy wife does not know your dog\n\n\nOr: stop taking her phobia as a personal attack\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYou're a considerate person\n\n\n, so I know you'll understand where I'm coming from here. This isn't about you.\n\nThis is a message for people who are mystified and offended when their \"cute doggie\" scares a stranger by jumping on them.\n\n\nMy wife has a phobia of dogs and cats. The reasons and story behind it aren't relevant here, except to say that is an immutable fact: her reaction to the animals will no",
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  "publishedAt": "2026-02-15T11:39:34.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.wiwafrog.online",
  "textContent": "## My wife does not know your dog\n\nOr: stop taking her phobia as a personal attack\n\n### You're a considerate person\n\n, so I know you'll understand where I'm coming from here. This isn't about you.\nThis is a message for people who are mystified and offended when their \"cute doggie\" scares a stranger by jumping on them.\n\nMy wife has a phobia of dogs and cats. The reasons and story behind it aren't relevant here, except to say that is an immutable fact: her reaction to the animals will not change, regardless of size, type, or familiarity.\n\nLeft: What you see. Right: What my wife sees.\n\nWe like our walks, and so we regularly encounter folks walking their dogs. Most are considerate, and control their excitable animal as they pass strangers, but fairly often you meet... _them_.\n\nYou know how it goes with these types.\nTheir dog makes a beeline for every stranger, often just to take a sniff, sometimes to jump up on them as a greeting, rarely to go for an attack. And the owner just lets them do it.\nA stranger cannot reasonably know which of those it's going to be, given they don't know the dog or its temperament. And for someone who jumps out of their skin at the very sight of a dog, it's terrifying.\n\nFrom there, the empty platitudes flow:\n\"Oh don't worry, he wouldn't hurt a fly!\"\n\"He's only a little dog, don't be scared!\"\n\nThese are what really drive me up the wall.\n\nWe don't know you.\nWe don't know your dog.\nThe fact is, even without a phobia, that situation is alarming, and your reassurances after the fact didn't change that.\n\n### Oh here we go\n\nWhen this is explained to these types of dog owners, often it's defensiveness that flows next:\n\"That's your problem, not mine!\"\n\nThey behave as if they are not responsible for their actions, and they try to put doubt in your mind that they were in the wrong. But they _were_.\n\nTo be as charitable as possible, maybe they're just hurt that someone could think their doggie was capable of violence. People form real, tangible connections with their pets, so it's conceivable that they're reacting out of offense.\n\nBut let's be less charitable.\n\nIt's an animal.\n\nIt doesn't have the level of agency, consciousness, and self-control that we are capable of as humans.\n\nUltimately, it is not responsible for what it does: its adoptive parent is.\n\nWe do not blame the animal for rushing towards us. We blame the owner for not holding it back, or for not keeping it on a lead, or for failing to train undesirable behaviours out of it.",
  "title": "My wife does not know your dog",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-15T11:39:34.571Z"
}