Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report, she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.
Dogs-at-work policies are supposed to be a workplace perk. And to some people, spending a day at the office with a beloved canine companion—or having a colleague’s golden retriever wander over for a midday petting break—sounds like heaven on earth. But for others, dogs in the office are an unwelcome distraction and a genuine obstacle to getting work done. They may have allergies or phobias or simply struggle to focus amid furry interruptions. And in a workplace where dogs are treated as universally delightful, admitting you’d rather they weren’t there can feel vaguely taboo. In fact, dogs at work can pose such an issue that I originally wrote about this back in 2018—but the absurd stories since then have continued to pour in.
To employees who love dog-friendly offices, it’s all sunshine and rainbows, as these people recount:
I’ve been bringing my dog to work for four years, and it’s one of the biggest reasons I’ve stayed at my current job. She sleeps under my desk most of the day, so she’s not a distraction, but she’s so much happier not being away from me all day, and I swear, having her around lowers my blood pressure when work gets frustrating. I’ve even formed closer relationships with some of my co-workers because we’ve gotten to know each other better when they stop by to pet her.
I don’t have a dog, but I work in an office where a dog makes regular visits, and it’s an enormous perk for me. It works because it’s a small office and he’s a good-natured sociable dog. He drops by generally only one or two times a week, so he’s not especially disruptive, and those that want to get to take him for walks.
Personally, having dogs (not just my own, but any dog) around is such a huge, huge benefit to my mental health and happiness at work that if my office stopped allowing them, I’d start looking for a new job or I’d work from home. After salary and benefits, it’s the most important thing about a job to me, personally.
But in any office of more than a few employees, you’re likely to find some people who don’t love dogs—or, in the case of allergies, can’t even be around them:
I was able to land a fantastic job with a big raise after years of stagnant, dead-end work. My first day, I walked into the office, and it was full of dogs. It’s a dog-friendly office, which was never advertised or communicated during the hiring process.
I’m allergic to dogs—VERY allergic. Within 10 minutes of arriving at work, I find that my eyes are red, itchy, and watering, my nose is stuffed up, and I get a headache from my swollen sinuses. This is what happens when I’m on medication! If I skip the meds, I break out in hives, start to wheeze, and run the risk of my throat swelling closed. I went to my doctor, who referred me to a specialist. I’m already on the strongest meds they give out, and they said as long as I “expose myself” to allergens, this will keep happening and might get worse over time.
I tried to work with my company to fix this. They put me in the far corner away from the majority of the pooches, where I’m near a door that I can prop open. They also have a company that cleans biweekly, and they let me work from home one day a week. The nature of my job demands that I be in the office at least four times a week, so I really have no wiggle room. Even working from home once a week has been a stretch and caused some negative feelings on my team, even though they hear me sneezing every 20 minutes when I’m there!
It’s been two months, and while I love the work, love the company, and love my co-workers, I’m miserable. I’ve considered looking for a new job, but every job I’ve seen in my field has a “dog-friendly” office. I’m at a loss. Their dog-friendly office isn’t ME-friendly.
And, of course, some people are afraid of dogs:
I work at a small business, and I am mildly afraid of dogs. Logically, I’m aware that this is mostly irrational, but I tense up and can’t focus on anything else when a dog is nearby. The chairman of our company has a dog, which he often brings to the office. He has also been known to encourage other people to bring their dogs to work. You can imagine how I feel about this. However, many people like the dogs.
A couple of years ago, I made a request, via my then manager, for measures to be taken to keep the dog away from areas where I am likely to be. It was agreed that the dog wouldn’t be brought to the area of the office where my desk is, but nothing was said or done about communal areas. The chairman either has since forgotten about this agreement or doesn’t care. I don’t want to be seen as a killjoy, nor do I want to pick a fight with the chairman, but I don’t want to have to put up with this.
Not wanting to be seen as a killjoy is a common sentiment among people who don’t love their dog-friendly workplaces. No one hopes to come across as the grinch who dislikes dogs in an office full of dog people, or get blamed for ruining a perk that other employees enjoy. So people often stay quiet or ask only for the smallest accommodations even when the situation is making it difficult to do their jobs. To complicate it further, office dogs are unusual among workplace perks in that you can’t simply opt out. If you are allergic, are afraid of dogs, or just find them distracting, you’re sharing the space whether you want to or not.
Moreover, even for those who like having dogs around, the arrangement works only if the pets are well-behaved. Nothing turns a supposedly dog-friendly workplace into a battleground as quickly as a canine with its own agenda.
Our office building (we’re one office in a building of about 20) used to be dog-friendly. Then two dogs … um, consummated their relationship … in the hallway. And an attorney’s dog bit one of his clients. And someone’s dog got off-leash during a walk and was almost hit by a car in the parking lot. And the tiny ferocious interior decorator’s dog would just stand by their glass door and bark at every single person that passed by, all day long. I have two cats, and I can’t count the number of times I was sniffed over or growled at by dogs in the halls or outside while their owners assured me that they were friendly!
Building management finally decreed that the building was no longer dog-friendly two years ago, and people still try to bring their dogs in.
I work for a small nonprofit in a city where many offices allow dogs. The co-founders adopted an abused dog that has serious behavior problems. When they tried to leave the dog at home, he ended up destroying their furniture, so now they bring him to work.
Normally I love dogs, but this one is not my favorite. For one, he has horrible gas, which infuses the office with a rank stench that has made me vomit. More seriously, he bites people. He bit my co-worker badly enough that she had to go to the ER. The two co-founders paid for her medical bills but still brought in the dog. He has bitten two other co-workers deeply enough to break the skin but not enough to require medical attention. The dog hasn’t bitten me but has snapped at me when I go into the CEO’s office, and I am terrified of him. Whenever I see this dog, I react fearfully, which infuriates the two co-founders, as if I were personally insulting them. I also feel like I should be able to go to a job that has nothing to do with pets without fear of getting bitten. We are not a dog rescue or the Humane Society.
We are a five-person design studio with three associates who own it, and one of them got a dog, Pepito, about a year ago. He is an absolute nightmare. He chews on everything, bites people when we walk around the office, loves to counter-surf (and explore any other surface for that matter), and plays with loud toys and with a dog that another person who works here brings in sometimes. (Even that dog gets tired of playing with Pepito, though, and has to be locked up.) This has made the work environment completely dreadful to me. The constant yelling at the dog, trying to make him stop the shenanigans he is always up to, being alert when I have lunch so he doesn’t try to eat it and so I don’t get attacked when I’m finally leaving, etc., is causing me stress.
If you’re thinking that these sound like problems more with humans than with dogs, you’re right! The real issue is with people who don’t manage their pets appropriately—and also with the workplaces that allow dogs to run amok. A responsible dogs-at-work policy must make it clear that loud barking, bathroom accidents, property damage, and aggressiveness toward humans and other dogs aren’t permitted, and it must include consequences if those rules are broken (generally, that the dog needs to stay home). But some offices don’t think through their dog policies beyond simply “You can bring them”—then do nothing to intervene when a dog is disruptive.
When workplaces don’t impose some semblance of order on office dogs, dog-friendly offices can even attract unaffiliated dogs that simply blend in with their authorized brethren:
I’ve worked my entire career at tech startups, which are invariably filled with multiple office dogs. The wildest story was the day a dog arrived who didn’t belong. We noticed the new dog running through the office but assumed it belonged to an employee. The dog got wilder and wilder, jumping on and barking at people, and soon the work chat escalated from “Whose dog is this?” to “Will the owner please come get your dog already!”
The receptionist checked that morning’s front-door footage to see who had arrived with that dog, and to our shock, we realized it had arrived alone. It had sneaked in after an oblivious co-worker, which was impressive because we were many floors up in an elevator building. (We would later learn that the dog had ridden an elevator with a different co-worker who also didn’t say anything because he “thought the dog knew where it was going.”)
I ended up catching the dog after it muscled its way into a conference room, which unfortunately was hosting an important call with an external party. The dog was later reunited with its owner, who worked on a different floor.
But if that story feels like an argument against dogs in the office, it’s only fair to end with one in which an office dog delivers a particularly satisfying form of workplace justice:
Several lifetimes ago, I worked for a tiny, wildly corrupt nonprofit. It has since gone under, which it needed to. It was a super toxic workplace with one of the few culture benefits being that you could bring your dog to the office. I had my first dog at the time, a very smart rescue dachshund. She happened to be with me at the office on the day that I was fired without warning. I did the traditional packing-my-things-into-a-copy-paper-box move and, unbeknownst to me, my dog marched into the main room where the two VPs sat, one of whom would be fired the following week, and pooped right next to the desk of the VP responsible for firing me. This was a house-trained and very, very smart dog.
The VP noticed the poop right as my dog and I were getting ready to walk out the door for the final time, my arms holding the copy-paper box, my dog in her harness and on her leash. She demanded I put everything down and go clean up the poop, which, until that moment, I was unaware existed. I knew I was never going to get a reference from this place, and particularly her, so I said “Nope” and walked out the door, never to return. It was so satisfying. My good girl got so many treats for that.
