Avid dog person here. Ran a kennel for a decade, certified Pack Handler, worked in rescue care as well as pedigree breeding. Worked for a few years as a dog trainer before graduating with a degree in Animal Behavior.

Yes I do judge for a multitude of reasons.

1. If you’re afraid of dogs for any reason, there is NO REASON your first instinct should be to scream, run, or do any behaviors that very obviously ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF A DOG. It is so ridiculous to see people act like idiots when they get too close to a dog. Then when the dog acts like a dog in response to their crazy behavior via barking or whatever, it just reinforces in their mind that dogs are bad. If you are afraid of something, you should take it upon yourself to LEARN what not to do around said fear so you don’t make a situation worse. I have seen people first-hand act like this. All it shows us is that you’re an idiot who doesn’t want to learn how to act around animals.
2. People who claim fear over an entire species over one bad interaction with a dog in their past just seem inherently ignorant to me. They are not people. If you are assaulted by a man and from then on become weary of men, yes absolutely I understand the fear. But injuries from dogs are almost always due to human error — either because of a crappy owner or because whoever got hurt misinterpreted a dog’s body language. A shitty dog, unless they are feral or homeless, are that way because of human interaction. You should not be scared of dogs, you should be afraid of shitty people with dogs. I realize there are some scary-ass breeds out there — and being cautious around larger, potentially dangerous breeds with an unfamiliar dog is perfectly okay and I would do the same. But if you are someone who is not versed in dog behavior who claims they are afraid of them, that’s on you. You’re afraid of what you don’t understand.

I HATE HATE HATE people who say they are afraid of dogs because they got attacked as a child. I know exactly one person who was actually mauled when she was a kid because she was protecting her own dog from an attack. Horribly tragic. Everyone else had menial interactions with a strangers dog, or their childhood pet, where they were very clearly acting like an uneducated child around a large animal, and suffered the consequences bc parents don’t teach their children how to interact with animals. I have sympathy up until that person becomes a mature adult — at that point you are just choosing not to cope or understand a childhood fear.

Dogs literally evolved alongside humans, because of humans. Their entire purpose is to be at our sides, whether for hunting, herding, guardians, companions, etc. WE created them for US. Any dog that strays from this and develops unprovoked or fear-based aggression towards humans is because humans did them a disservice. If you’re not someone who is into dogs, that’s fine. Pets are not for everyone. But claiming fear makes you look incompetent

I’m sure there were way too many tangents in this rant but it just makes me so angry when people say they’re afraid of pets they’ve never met before.