Why would you do this?

*Confused* I always take my dog and dogs (when I still had 2) into our local petsmart. And everytime I went there were, GASP, other dogs.

I will give the father the benefit of the doubt and say that clearly it isn't our business why he was there. Although I do find it a bit odd and wouldn't personally do it.

However the dogs there have just as much right to be there as the children and their father so that statement was so out of left field. I can't even begin to fathom why anyone brought that up.

What would have happened had the child been afraid of say, ferrets, and there were ferrets there?

Yeah, sums up my thoughts. My niece is severely terrified of dogs. ANY dogs, and for no apparent reason. We've been gradually exposing her to my dogs and she can be in the same room as them now, but will practically climb up her parents if one of the dogs stands up.

It's really hard to know why. Some people view phobias as something kids will grow out of if they get exposed to the object of their fear regularly and nothing bad happens, over and over. And honestly, it tends to work. Also, making a big deal out of the fact that a kid is scared can feed into it so it's probably good that he wasn't flipping out about her behavior either.

Petsmart isn't the best place to take a dog phobic kid, but it isn't the worst either. He may have been hoping to find a place that had well behaved, leashed dogs.

Aurelia was born terrified of birds. Even Moxiecollies' beautiful, tiny, rainbow, lady gouldian finch scared her to death. I was able to gradually desensitize her and now she adores them. She holds chicks, feeds ducks out of her hands, etc.

I have to say, although that is fairly strange behavior of the parent in my eyes, what bothers me SO much more is when parents take their kids to Petsmart JUST to go tap on the rodent's glass, pet the dogs and make stupid faces at the cats in the adoption section. Some people look at Petsmart as free kid entertainment, which seems a little rude to the people who are really there for nothing other than truly getting things for their pets.

I think it is a little odd, I wonder why the kid was so afraid of dogs and whether or not the father was intentionally bringing her there to help her get over it (which, well, might not be the best set up but for a regular non-dog person of course that seems logical), or maybe he didn't even know? How was the father reacting to his child's behavior? If I were him I would be trying to figure out what the problem stems from, and the way I'd personally work on it is by finding some really non-responsive dogs (like a nice aloof sighthound or something, a dog who is TRULY tolerant of people, but won't make a lot of eye contact or jump, lick or get in the kid's face) and starting out at a distance, and giving the kid candy or something, and continually ask the kid questions about how they're feeling about the situation and what makes them worry the most about dogs... (one of the great things about children and fear is that they can talk, making them considerably more simple to figure out).

the mom probably had dad stop and pick something up and he had no idea what was going on with her.

a lot of dads are clueless with this kind of thing.

i know chris would take ginnie in a heart beat to petsmart thinking she would love it , i know on the other hand it would terrify her as she is also scared of dogs.

Yeah, idk... without immediatley knowing the situation it's hard to judge. There are so many different factors.

I completely disagree. Growing up my sisters and I LOVED animals, but we couldn't have any pets. We walked our elderly neighbor's dog almost every day just because we loved dogs so much. But besides occasionally seeing a dog or cat at a friend's or family member's house, we didn't get a lot of contact with animals. So one of our favorite things to do was to go to the local pet store and "tap on the glass" and see the animals.

Heck, I went to Petsmart last week to kill time waiting for a friend, and walked around looking at all the animals.

I've NEVER been bothered by kids (or adults, LOL) just looking at animals when I'm in Petsmart (or any other pet store).

I don't think she meant just looking...more like, obnoxiously looking? Lol. I know I get sick of kids tapping on the glass at the grooming salon because it's hard to groom a dog while it is trying to look at something else.

I don't think it's a big deal for people to go just to look, but obnoxious kids tapping on the glass (or, anyone tapping on the glass) is irksome. Not so much that it bothers ME but I always feel like it must bug the animals that are behind the glass.

Heck, we don't even sell animals at the store I work at. The only living thing we have, aside from the crickets, is a foster cat in a cage at the front of the store. And we still get oodles of people that let their kids loose and tell them "go look at the cat" while they ask us a billion questions or shop. And then we have to play the parents and make sure the kids aren't actually pestering her. Or the people that bring their dogs with while they shop, and then they have random kids bugging them and their dog....

Okay, maybe a totally different tangent. But yeah I get annoyed when pet stores end up being a way to keep kids entertained. If it's done respectfully that's cool (I, too, frequented pet stores as a kid just to look), but usually it's not. =P

and I take my ferrets to the local petsmart. 9 times out of 10, there's no dog there, or one or two at max.

If there's a child that is afraid of my ferrets then, gasp, I walk my ferrets away from the child so the child is not uncomfortable.

She asked for reasons. I gave 3 reasons.

And again, there's hardly ever any dogs when I go, or else there are a few and it is easy to stay away/for the dogs owners to stay away from me. I go for the sole reason of socializing my ferrets, and yah, I expect other people to go around my ferrets with their dog if I'm in an aisle -- and I'd expect the same if I had a kid with me that was visibly afraid.

They weren't in the isle. They were on the corner where you can't see them until you go around the corner. Didn't see them until after I had walked just past them and the girl got scared. Obviously the second time I actually could see the kid ahead of me and kept my distance.

I'm not sitting there TRYING to terrify young kids with my dogs like you're making it sound.

Ugh I agree. We get tons of parents and grandparents coming in asking if there's animals for the kids to see and when I say no they go "oh well that's such a shame", look at me like I'm depriving the kids of some life changing experience, and they leave. Other times we get parents who park their kids in the dog toy section and browse the store while their darlings sit there for 30 minutes squeaking every toy they can get their hands on and trashing the displays.

Then you, my friend, have never truly lived.

LIES! We all know that is your sole purpose with Papillons!

As for children/dogs in petstores. In PA there were rarely dogs in Petsmart/Petco when we went in, here there are ALWAYS at least 5-6 dogs when we go. Always!
If I was a parent I absolutely would not take my dog fearing child into a pet store, especially if they are super flighty about it, which means they tend to also stare down dogs that they are scared of. That's not conducive for the child OR people with dogs.
I avoid EVERYONE in pet stores, but I'm also not going to go hiding from a kid who is scared by the sight of my dog. BOTH parties have the right to be there, but if there is something that I want to look at that puts me in the line of sight of a dog fearing child, I'm not going to NOT look at it because there is a kid 20 yards away.


I don't really care if people take their kids/dogs to pet stores as long as they leave me alone. I hate yelling at kids when they try to run up and pet Frodo. Or yelling at owner's who use flexis on their dogs and can't seem to find the darn lock button!

ROFLMFAO!!!! For the win.


And seriously, if you're wanting to scare people . . . Mia? SUMMER????

Anyone who has a case of the terrors over a Papillon probably needs to never leave the house.

FTW. And QFT.

Bwahahahaha all I keep seeing are those ridiculously sweet smiles in the most recent photo thread. Ahhhhh the cute....

roflmao

We're working on it.

DSC_1190 by Summer_Papillon, on Flickr

Okay haha, I've never ever seen Summer growl or bite at anything (not even a toy). I don't think she has a mean bone in her body.