I hear ya!

As long as you get "Do not interact with or even acknowledge a working service dog." printed on the pencils, sounds good to me. Is it really so hard to ignore working service dogs? I, somehow, manage to restrain myself from interacting with every dog I come across.

Last night at a restaurant not one, but three staff members had to tell us "I know I am not supposed to pet you while you are working, but you are so cute." It was frustrating, we just wanted to enjoy our dinner out, a rarity for the last two years. We might have fewer problems with restaurant access than we did 30 years ago, but now everybody wants to interact with the dog. Honestly, he gets plenty of love at home, distracting attention from randos is not required. And it is distracting; for every 100th person who says "I know I am not supposed to pet you while you are working" there will be one who adds "but I'll just give you a little pet." and feels entitled to interact with the dog in spite of the expected behavior. Watching constantly for the unexpected interaction or, even worse, the stealthy dog distractors who try to slyly interact without the handler's knowledge, can be exhausting.

Sounds like a lot of effort and money to invest in people who don't even care enough to obey the sign.

I love it.

Omg please do this I don’t have a guide dog but there are some people I would love to hand one of these to. Honestly if you make these you should open an Etsy shop and sell them lol.

I've been tempted to say "I see you have a disability too"

"What?"

"You clearly can't read the giant signs saying 'don't touch, don't talk, don't pet' so you either can't read or have a visual impairment of your own."

One of the many reasons I went back to being a cabe user. It gets so old dealing with the other humans.

Funny story. For 6 years I walked the same road to work with my guide dog.
I was in a foreign country looking for a building, I'm walking through a field on a dirt path, using my cane. I come across a woman who I assume speaks my language. I ask her where the building is. She says I'm going the right way but the path gets tricky ahead. I never find the building and walk back to the road. Someone else walks me to the building on a road (the longer way to get there).
Two weeks later I'm sitting at my hotel and a woman comes up to me and says, "I don't know if you remember me? I met you in a field and you asked directions. After I left you I thought to myself, I don't think he can see very well. I probably should have walked you to the building.
Then we chat more. It turns out that this same woman has been driving past me on my walk to work every day in my home country. She remembers my dog. She never once asked if I wanted a ride. We lived in a place with horrible weather and atrocious public transportation!
Small world full of small minds.

Make them!! Hopefully no one stabs you with them though 😅

NTA! If you did, I’d buy one despite not having a guide dog.

I'm a sighted teacher for the Visually Impaired and am puppy raising a guide dog in training. I literally had this conversation last night.

I try to be more open because I'm in a better role to educate and bring awareness versus someone just trying to live their life but holy moly.

While my experiences aren't comparable to being a dog guide handler, I share your frustration. Your quote idea delights me but it's probably best to consider a less escalating phrase. Or mix them all together for a luck of the draw, ha!

This boggles the mind that people do this! I get it, dogs are cute & charming, but restrain yourself!

No, but it would quickly get expensive so it is not something I would do.

Do it! And then come back and tell us how it went! It should be awesome!

OMG if you make those i'd soooooo buy them.
I live in the dutch speaking part of belgium and my guide dog has do not pet in both english and dutch on his harnas and vest yet people still think it meens pleace pet my dog he's totaly not working or anything.
I mostly ask them if they can read that's mostly enough to stop them.
If they have kids i ask them how they'd like it if i sudanly start petting and playing with them.
A bit direct i know but i'm soooooooooooo sick of it. Just resist the damn urges and leave us alone. it's not that hard.

Maybe instead you should get a brightly colored shirt that says, “I will be an asshole if you talk to my dog”.
PS: spellcheck works wonders

Wait so are you irritated at people for just looking at and commenting on your dog? Or the interacting and petting it without asking you? Either way I don’t think that’s a particularly great snarky joke, comment or whatever you wanna call it. I know this is a inconvenience for you all the time, but for most of these people that see a dog out in public, they clearly don’t know that it’s an inconvenience you have to deal with a lot, so I would kind of say it’s an an unnecessarily asshole kind of thing to do.

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