I am not an animal person.
Perhaps this flaw in my character is a predictable but not preordained (both of my siblings are unrepentant cat lovers) symptom of growing up largely petless. And it is a flaw, or at least one of those inherently suspect character traits, like not having a library card or driving a cybertruck—you know there are people out there who do and probably several of them are normal, but you do have to look askance at such a person when you seem one out in the wild. People don’t trust people who don’t like animals.
Or maybe I just like the wrong kinds of animals. I love birds but not in cages, which pits me against both bird owners and people with outdoor cats. I have never once felt compelled to pet a stranger’s dog, though I have been known to spend half an hour stalking a garter snake in the nature preserve.
To be clear, I probably like your dog. I’m sure your dog is great, but I probably don’t care about your dog unless I care about you.
It is possible that instead what I am not is an animal person person.
Like many of my foibles, I wasn’t truly aware of this one’s existence until I started working at a public library.
The public library, or at least the one at which I work, is not a pet-friendly space. In an ideal world, it might be—we’ve all heard of Dewey and other library cats, a magical-sounding creatures that would probably end up stolen or with its head stuck in one of the tallboys we find hidden in the stacks if implemented in most modern libraries.
In the real world, pets and libraries still tend not to mix. There’s the usual concerns—mess, noise, allergies, phobias—all of which we weigh against the library’s guiding principle: what will make the library the most comfortable for the most people? For us, for now, that means no pets.
Again, your dog would probably have no issues being inside a public building. Unfortunately not every dog is your dog.
Service animals are the exception, of course, and they are a large part of the reason why I am not an animal person person. Not the animals themselves—they’ve got a job to do, and most of them do it better than ninety-five percent of service professionals I’ve ever met, myself included. And, if we’re being fair here, it’s not their owners either, who patiently answer our questions and give a little smile of pride at their pup’s professionalism when a mother kneels down nearby with her toddler, pointing out the badges on the sides of the dog’s vest and giving a quick lesson about which animals it is and is not okay to pet.
Naturally my complaint stems from the people who think that the fact that their dog renders them a service—the great service of unconditional love and affection—means that it is entitled to be welcomed in places where service animals are.
And worse, the people who lie to me about whether the service their dog provides is a service or a service. Who snippily inform me that I may not ask what service their animal provides (I may, and in fact must), and then swear up and down that their dog, a barky six-pounder that nips at strangers as they pass and who the owner is actively in the process of cussing out, is a service animal. Forgive me my skepticism.
Human behaviors aside, the real reason I don’t want to see your non-service dog in the library is because there is no way for me to ask it to leave without seeming/feeling like a huge jerk. It’s very easy to kick out the guy watching porn on the public computers. Sometimes other patrons even thank you for doing so. Kicking out drunks and creeps makes me a good librarian; kicking out your dog makes me an asshole.
And also a good librarian. Though I’d appreciate it if I had the opportunity to practice this professional skill less often. Maybe then I can become an animal person person, or at least an animal person.
