A while back I was out with my dog Walnut, and saw a South East Asian man wearing a tracksuit walking towards me with a huge bull breed-type dog. Walnut can be nervous of larger dogs, so I did what I always do: I crossed the road to give us both some space.
The man shouted after me, clearly frustrated: “My dog’s friendly!” And I called back, “Sorry, mine’s nervous!” and kept walking.
I’ve thought about that exchange a lot. My reason for crossing the road had nothing to do with him or his dog. But I think that man saw my avoidance as one more instance of something he likely deals with constantly: a stranger deciding that he and his dog are a threat, before either of them has done anything at all. As a mixed race woman, I know what it’s like to sense a snap judgement land.
It’s not the dog; it’s our bias about their owner
Dogs can’t have social classes. They don’t have jobs, education, wealth, or any of the other things people use to infer someone’s class. But their guardians do, and that signalling runs so deep in the UK that it carries over to the dog.
Certain breeds get coded as “council estate” dogs. Others get coded as “yummy mummy” dogs. A bull-type breed gets read as aggressive before it’s done a single aggressive thing, while a cockapoo or a labradoodle gets the benefit of the doubt it hasn’t earned. None of this tracks with actual bite statistics or behavioural risk; it tracks with who is stereotypically assumed to own the breed.
Case in point: a rich White woman with a bull breed reads completely differently to a working class Black man walking the same dog. None of this is really about the dog. It’s about how quick we are to decide someone’s worth based on how they look.
The same class stereotypes show up in the food bowl
There’s real judgment in the industry around what you feed your dog. Discussions between advocates of raw feeding vs dried food vs home-cooking can be polarising. The more expensive the food, the more it gets treated as evidence of a good owner, and the more people feel entitled to raise an eyebrow at anyone who can’t afford similar.
Here’s my actual view: fed is best. There is no one food type that is inherently superior to all others. There’s good and bad raw food, good and bad dried food, and the right choice depends on your dog, your budget, and your life. Feed the best nutritional quality you can afford (using allaboutdogfood is a good starting point). Avoid falling into the trap of thinking that something which costs more time or money is inherently better.
A person who insists on making snap judgments about another guardian’s food choices tells you more about that person’s need to feel superior, than it does about the dog’s welfare.
It’s not my job to judge
When I moved to the UK from Italy, class was a framework I had to learn from scratch. Nobody sat me down and explained the rules, but it was obvious that everyone was operating by them all the time.
My approach as a trainer isn’t to categorise people into who’s doing it “right” vs “wrong”. I’ve written before about how bias creeps into training in ways that have nothing to do with the dog, and classism is just another example of that.
Instead, I’m here to help you and your dog build a good life together, and that starts with looking at the dog and the person actually in front of me, not the story society is telling me about them.
I’m Anna, a force-free dog trainer based in Walthamstow E17, working with dog guardians across East London and online. If you’d like support building practical skills for city life with your dog, I’d love to help. Find out more about how to work with me by getting in touch or exploring 1:1 training services.
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