Adam said
"That's a pretty different different example with the health risk second-hand smoke has been proven to be to everyone, but does open the door the a healthy conversation about risks and impact on folks around us.
Suppose a person could go the other way and say there are some people that are mortally afraid that a jet will fall out of the sky and hit them at any moment. Without judging what life path could lead someone to that place, they wont shut down the airspace over the arena during the game for those folks but maybe there are supports that can help them realistically assess the risks, make best choices within that, learn to cope with any associated anxieties and maybe even encourage others with ways on how to support them through it.
One thing I can think of is allergies. Not my area of expertise to know how that works with dogs and a building the size of the main arena as much as having it all in specific sections would have to at least partly adderss. But anyone else with history of animal allergies will tell you that the Keystone has its times of the year already where it’s not always ideal depending on which events have been recently in the building. I know as a kid the winter fair was a non-starter for me because of the reaction while I'd be there and even for days after. Hockey games within a few days of when the fair was done weren't ideal either but i made it work.
The elephant (St Bernard?) in the room in that the event happened quite a while ago and the people that were (are still?) opposing it haven’t brought even one single example of it being an event that had even a hint of an incident. It all just to me mainly comes across as some people don’t like dogs and/or a little change from their comfort zone and so are building a narrative that having dogs at a game is something way more dramatic and unworkable than it needs to be.
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Adam, I respect you and usually agree with you, but you are out to lunch here and frankly somewhat disrespectful.
Your whole airplane thing is ridiculous. Planes don't routinely fall out of the sky and crash into buildings. The very rare time they have, something has either gone disastrously wrong or it was intentional. People who have crippling fears about that would generally already be in therapy.
Incidents involving dogs, sadly, are a daily occurrence. Do they happen at hockey games? No, but dogs are also not generally at hockey games. But dog bites occur daily, even in Brandon, with most never being reported. I have a dog. While he is generally well-mannered and gentle, I have no illusion. He is a dog, and even a good boi can act unpredictably at times.
So now, take a dog and put them in an environment with lots of people, movement, noise (including very loud noises even by human standards), smells etc. It's a recipe for disaster. Just because there's not been an incident in Brandon *yet*, why would people defend what clearly has the potential to end badly for the human AND the dog?
I would have less issues if people didn't regard their dogs as fur babies. Well, *my* dog is well-mannered. *My* dog would never do that. *My* dog isn't like that. Get over it. We have bred dogs for protection and work for 10s of thousands of years. Companionship is a happy by-product of that. At their core, dogs are dogs and will behave like dogs. Does good training reduce the risk? Absolutely. But it doesn't make them immune.
A hockey game is one of the worst possible venues to have a dog.
People have the right to feel safe and protected from reasonable threats. Guess what? Dogs are a reasonable threat. Dogs in an enclosed, loud, chaotic and stimulating environment is a threat multiplied. Dogs are a sufficient threat generally that there are municipal by-laws surrounding dog ownership in most jurisdictions (licensing, breed bans, leash laws etc).
I love my dog. But I love and respect people more.