This feels really inappropriate. You're a 15 minute old account claiming that the subject of the article abuses his dog. The appropriate time and place to air that grievance, if it actually happened, would have been to the police, when you witnessed it. It sounds like you're trying to assassinate his character otherwise.
If what's true? The complaint isn't even clear. And what does he deserve exactly, a lynch-mob?
I can't believe people have the audacity to write unsubstatiated claims of animal abuse about a blind person's guide dog on a post about their achievements as a developer.
I didn't see what you saw, but maybe give them the dog walker the benefit of the doubt - sometimes after the 10th tree where the dog decides to prop up and stand trying to pee but only squeezing out one tiny drop cus they literally just peed a dozen times before, you give a little yank to have them move on.
Call it what you will. I think the distinction is valid, as working animals have a job, and treatment standards for pets don't apply. Working dogs need to be able to hold it in and/or stand up to a bit of being jerked around at their handler's convenience, without getting distracted. They're trained to put up with this stuff.
It might be true that impatient, testy handlers would get more out of their animal by behaving differently, but there's a big difference between that and treating an animal with outright cruelty.
While I have no reason to believe the original story about the dog, and would be inclined not to believe it as a properly trained guide dog would not need to have the lash yanked "all the time" and the commenters claims
That said I also believe your statements about "treatment standards for pets don't apply" is also completely wrong as the implication here would be that service animal should be treated less well than pets because they are "working", this is unbelievably ignorant and wrong on many levels.
Abusing a service animal simply because it is a service animal is wrong.
The point of outside time for a pet is to get a ridiculous serotonin high and pee where-ever they want.
The point of outside time of a guide dog is to do work.
If you compare me while I am at work to a person who's out at a bar with friends, I probably look "miserable". That doesn't mean I'm being abused at work. It just means that animals who work for a living (me, the dog) sometimes need to tone down the hormone rush in order to do our jobs.
Does this dog look miserable when in public, or does the comparison set (all the other dogs in public) simply look like the peak of hormone high?
In your ideal world, what would be my takeaway/conclusion as a reader from this story? How do you hope it changes or informs my view of this person and the Amazon piece?
I also know this guy. I'm his barber. He has the worst dandruff, absolutely unbelievable. But now that I think about it, he probably didn't know because he's blind
