Who Gives A Shit: 'Is Your Dog Friendly?'

So, dog owners do this thing when they meet each other on the street: in order to gauge whether one dog will bite the other dog's fucking head off, we'll call out "is your dog friendly?"

Seems kind of innocuous, no?

But this being Park Slope-n-all, there is no such thing.

I'm lucky enough to have a super duper friendly dog. In fact, Oliver is utterly fucking dumbfounded if your dog is walking by and doesn't want to say hello to him. It's like his brain can't compute the information, and he just stares, watches the dog pass, and takes one last long look back as if to say: WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU TO DESERVE THIS SORT OF TREATMENT!?"

So, ok: granted if your dog *is* friendly, there's not much more to say than "yes!" or "very" when another dog owner inquires as to their level of approachability. However, I've begun to notice something lately from the "not friendly" dog owner camp and it usually makes me wanna vom.

Rather than just saying "NO...he's not friendly" and leave it at that, everyone needs to come up with some sort of War and Peace explanation as to why their dog may or may not get all cujo: "well, he's VERY friendly, but only with female dogs...is your dog a male or a female?" or "he's almost always super friendly, but sometimes on long walks or if he's really tired he might be a bit unpredictable" (said as the woman felt confident enough to approach me and my dog with her "unpredictable" pooch." Or this one was my fave from yesterday: "he's friendly, but he doesn't get along with old dogs." UHM, what!? Your dog is an ageist? Or a sexist? Or a racist!?

HONESTLY, I DON'T GIVE A SHIT! I JUST WANT A SIMPLE "YES" OR "NO."

I will not judge you or think you less of a person because your dog is not friendly. I will not assume you don't care about society, or animal rights, or locally produced food. I will not assume that you are a bad fur mommy or fur daddy. I will not assume that you (or your dog) are in therapy.  I just wanna know, quickly and without bullshit, whether or not I should be concerned about your dog biting my dog's face. That's IT.

Sheesh.