Paw-don me?
A Michigan woman stirred controversy on X this week by complaining about a young child approaching her service dog at an animal-friendly sporting goods store without her permission.
Now, an NYC canine behavioral expert is sharing four ways to ease an abrupt interaction between your dog and a stranger.
“The thing is, we can’t control a child,” Brett Bailey told The Post on Wednesday. “I can’t control anybody in New York City, but I can control my dog.”
Lynne Schmidt sparked the debate about dogs and consent on Saturday when she tweeted: “Small child runs up to Zoë. I body block and say, ‘Maybe we don’t run up to dogs we don’t know.’ The parent: She’s three… Me: If she isn’t on voice recall, maybe she should be leashed?”
Several X users weighed in with their thoughts.
“Honestly, I think that’s a great suggestion! I was a leashed kid,” tweeted one.
“Maybe your dog shouldn’t be around children,” wrote one dissenter. “This was very rude of you.”
Schmidt told NBC News that she didn’t actually say the leash line to the parent.
Nevertheless, she was hounded by social media users.
“When the tweet first gained traction, my sister texted me and was like ‘Whoa, your tweet has almost been seen by 1 million people’ and then it kept climbing and we were both like ‘Huh? Well. This is strange,’” Schmidt wrote in a Facebook message to NBC News. “Now we’re both just baffled at the violence and vitriol aimed at me and Zoë.”
Schmidt said the child “clearly was not taught how to approach a dog, and that is enough for me to assume that though she was three years old, she was a threat to my dog.”
Bailey agrees that parents shouldn’t allow their kids to walk up to unfamiliar dogs.
“People do need to protect their child,” said Bailey, 46. “I wouldn’t let my child run over to a strange human being, and that’s the same for running to a strange dog.”
The New York native and owner of Who’s A Good Boy Industries has offered his expertise to pup owners in Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn and lower Westchester since 2002.
These are his tips for avoiding potentially dangerous dog-stranger interactions.
A positive interrupter, such as a treat or clicker, is employed to distract the dog.
“Bring your hand back and say the word ‘with me,'” Bailey advises.
The phrase will alert your dog to stand behind you to receive a treat and also distract them from a stranger walking up.
“All of a sudden the kid’s coming over with me. Your dog’s gonna fly right back behind you. Because this is what we rehearsed,” he explained. “I’m not distributing the food right away. I’m slowly sliding it out.”
If your dog is aggressive or fearful, Bailey suggests saying the command well before the child is near the pup.
Just like humans, dogs have a no-no square, and it’s their face.
“No dog likes to be touched in the face,” Bailey noted. “So when someone does approach my dog, I always tell them, ‘Please, not the head, touch my dog in the back, and I’ll have the dog look at me.'”
If your dog is friendly, tell the stranger to pet his back, Bailey recommends, especially if that’s his favorite spot.
Another command is “touch the target.”
“Teach your dog to touch a target and bridge that to the ‘go say hello’ command,” Bailey said.
The owner marks the target to the dog, which walks over to the designated spot and returns to the owner. After completing the task, the pup receives a reward.
“When [someone says], ‘Oh, can my child say hello to you?’ I say, ‘Tell your child to put his hand out, and I go say hi, and my dog will come over to touch the child and come back to me,” Bailey continued.
“If the dog doesn’t want to touch the child, the dog’s not gonna go over there.”
If an unfamiliar person approaches your dog, and it could be trouble, Bailey recommends body blocking them and alerting the person that the dog “is not friendly.”
“Consent is not just a thing in the human world, it’s actually something in the dog world,” Bailey said. “It is important for people to understand that we shouldn’t approach dogs without consent.”
Bailey — who specializes in canine fear, reactivity and aggression — believes people should practice these tricks with their dogs before an incident occurs.
“You practice what you want when it’s not happening, so you got it locked down when it does,” he said.