I live in Germany and I go to parks to freestyle with a soccer ball. My issue has always been dogs off lease interfering with my personal business. I have some balls with bite marks. I have been snubbed and sometimes gotten a rude response from owners.
I have lived in the USA also. My observation generally is that people find it weird when you say you don't like dogs/cats/etc -- almost like they are hearing it for the first time. This was a big difference from my home place.
I don't hate them, I just feel totally uncomfortable. Sometimes I feel my heart racing or I just totally freeze when I see a dog off lease nearby. (I would love to fix this: would appreciate any pointers).
I’ve had a couple of friends who were afraid like you, where I would not bring my dog (a Vizsla - Quite energetic and very into people, so not a good idea to take him if I want those friends to feel comfortable). They started to come round to dogs generally after hanging out with friends that have smaller more docile breeds. Eventually they felt more comfortable and after shorter interactions with mine they got familiar with how the dog behaves, what motivates them, what they understand etc and slowly figure out that most are similar. So I’m not sure this is helpful, but that’s been my experience.
That's an interesting sentence.
I’m from USA. On the same page with you here about the collectivist vs individual freedom. As you noted it’s a tragedy of the commons—-because unquestioned individual freedom is prized so heavily in USA, some dog owners take advantage of it without appropriate precaution, and those people tend to do things like call the police on black people, or scare and injure children by accident with their dogs, and these incidents correspondingly build our stereotype of off-leashers. Ironically this also leads to laws and rules and a general social attitude that restrict our individual freedom to walk dogs off leash.
In that way, Europeans are more ‘individually free’ on this topic because, as you note, off leash dog walking is totally normal over there because people wouldn’t think of doing it without appropriate control of their dog. Interesting to think about the tension and paradoxes between individual and collectivist freedoms.
But, you probably have some annoying dog tax ;)
The tax is from the local municipality, and I think it’s for upkeep of some dog infrastructure - dedicated dog parks, bins with little bags. It’s not much
This passage doesn't make sense. It's a word salad.
To start with, do you know what a tragedy of the commons is?
Second, why would "individual freedom being prized so heavily" entail "people tending to do things like call the police"? Are you familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator and the like in authoritarian countries?
Third, what's the source for this bizarre claim that "those [dog owners] tend to do things like call the police on black people"?
Fourth, in what way is the latter at all relevant to the topic?
And they all say their dog is well behaved and doesn't do such things.