Brad put a name yesterday to a phenomenon we’ve experienced a lot.
It’s when you go somewhere where people are encouraged to look around and interact with things. This is like in a museum, at a fair, at an amusement park, basically anywhere people are acting like “tourists” instead of just going about their normal business.
At these places where people are in the tourist mindset, they are more likely to stare at, comment about, try to interact with, take pictures of, etc. your service dog. People also seem to have less of a filter when it comes to asking about anyone’s disability, service dog or not.
We think it is because they are already in that mode where they are encouraged to interact with things on display, and they don’t realize that you aren’t part of the display! That you are just a regular tourist like them!
It’s so annoying! And made poor Brad say maybe he doesn’t want a service dog 🙁
Anyone else experience this “tourist effect”?
an interesting concept!
~Christi