A woman on Reddit is defending her decision not to give up her train seat for a stranger’s dog in the Am I The A–hole forum.
“I (31F) was traveling on a MetroNorth train from Connecticut to NYC. I found a large seat at the very back and, while the train was relatively full, I put my handbag down next to me because no one was going that far back and I figured I could always move it if someone came along wanting to sit,” she explained in her post.
After about 20 minutes, a man and a dog boarded the train.
“A man holding a huge fuzzy-haired dog in his arms [came] down from the other end of the train. He asked if he could put his dog next to me while he sat where he was sitting,” she said.
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“I said no not because I did not want to move my bag but because I did not want to sit next to a dog without its owner or knowing its character,” she continued.
She added that she has never had a dog for a pet and would not know what to do if it began to bark or was “misbehaving.”
“I tried to explain as much but the man though[t] I just didn’t want to give up my extra space and called me a bad name because ‘seats are for living beings not bags.’ Would putting my bag somewhere else have changed anything?” she wondered.
Reddit commenters agreed with the woman’s reasoning and decision.
“Dogs do not belong on seats. And: Dogs need to be with their owner,” one person affirmed.
Even dog lovers agreed with the woman’s choice to assert her boundaries on the train.
“I love dogs, I have a dog. I’m still not sitting next to a strange dog whose temperament I don’t know! The dog would be perfectly happy on the floor and able to move around,” the person said.
“I know someone who had reconstructive surgery after being bit in the face by a ‘nice’ dog. I would never consider sitting next to a dog like that if I wasn’t 100% confident that it was well-behaved,” another person added.
Someone else agreed and noted that the only situation they’d allow that would be if the dog was a service animal.
Otherwise, “dogs are to be in some kind of container (bag, kennel etc.) or securely controlled on a leash (i.e. leashed and sat in between the owner’s legs/out of the way of passengers).”
