As I didn’t want to completely blow up another post, I outsourced my personal experience with my dogs in public life here.
I live in Paris where dogs are excluded from most of public life. Most of the parks are forbidden for dogs, and there is no way of getting into a store with your dog unless it sells animals. In the bus and tram, dogs that don’t fit into a bag that you can carry are not allowed (how stigmatizing is that??). Even in parks where they are allowed, there will be closed off places where they are not anymore. And of course, any public building will not let any (non service) dog inside.
However, I can tell you that in Germany things look very much differently! You can go into any store (with exception of food stores maybe) with your dog without anyone turning an eyelid, public transport is no restriction at all, and the concept of fenced parks has not even been introduced. So, when in doubt, you can probably take your dog with you.
More precisely, I want to talk about dogs at work as it typically takes up most of any person’s life, and will therefore affect the dog’s life most.
In Germany, it is not that exceptional to bring your dog to work. It’s really not much of a deal. I myself know of three work places where there were dogs on a daily basis. Another friend who I proposed to get a dog and take it to work didn’t seem very worried about her employer not allowing her to bring one. One girl in university had her dog with her all the time. All this is considering that I only know very few workplaces there.
Now here in France, things certainly look differently. I once asked to bring my dog to work exceptionally, and I got the permission, for 2 weeks. The dog really did nothing else than sleep all day, did not bark once, and everything was fine. I was working in the only room in the building’s basement with only one coworker sharing my room, who was fine with the dog. No one ever comes to that basement except for explicitly seeing one of us.
When I asked whether I could continue bringing my dog, I was told that no. The only reason I got was that clients could come and see the dog and that would be kind of unprofessional. First of all, there were no clients ever there. Second of all, the clients were never going to go downstairs. Third of all, I could have just not brought my dog when there were clients ! It was just a really bad excuse that wasn’t going to be discussed.
Now I changed jobs, and in my new company I asked again whether I could bring either my dog or a fostered guide dog puppy. I reckoned the latter would be more likely as the company does engage in social projects. First, by default, whatever coworkers I asked his opinion said ‘probably not’. When I talked to HR she also said ‘probably not’, but when she verified there was no reason a dog couldn’t legally be brought into the premises. Then a couple of days later, HR told me that the decision was ‘no’ because the direction thinks it is too difficult to realize. They never talked to me about potential issues they might have. It later turned out they were of the style ‘dogs bite, there is always someone who is allergic or afraid, imagine the dog barking and distressing everyone’ etc. Well, knowing my dog, I can assure that he barks about once a month under very specific conditions, he won’t bite anyone, and as he looks incredibly cute and is very well educated, people who are usually afraid of dogs actually really like mine ! But no one would ask me about any of that.
One coworker summed it up very aptly by saying that the biggest problem he sees about bringing a dog into any company is the mental blockage of the French to welcome a dog in the workplace. They just think ‘it’s wrong’. This would also explain the client problem of my first employer: It is the only ‘explanation’ that makes at least halfway sense about why a dog on the job would devalue the actual work in anyone’s eyes.
In case you are interested in what I think about dogs in public places on a more objective basis, please do not hesitate to check out this article.