Yesterday I was perusing this discussion over at DamnPortlanders and thinking to myself that I had seen a number of dogs on the MAX in blatant disregard of the official rules when last night for the first time ever, I saw a guy bring his dog on with an actual carrier. Imagine that, somebody actually abiding by the letter of the law.
What I’m wondering is how people feel about this rule and where it falls in the “how far can it be bent” spectrum. Over on the DamnPortlanders thread, it seems to be leaning toward “breaking the rule is okay”, though there are some vociferous folks who think it’s wrong, wrong, WRONG to bring un-carriered non-service-animal dogs on the MAX. And as someone who has been excoriated to some extent for bending a rule/law for my own purposes, I really wonder where this ranks to people– for me, it’s worse than riding a bike on a sidewalk and, say, smoking a joint in your bedroom, not that I really think there’s anything wrong with either, since as long as you know what you’re doing in either case, the only harm is most likely to yourself. And I understand that there’s a distinction between a law and a corporate rule, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say they’re equal.
As a dog owner, I’m somewhat sympathetic in my more selfish moments to those who want to bring their dogs along for a ride, though my beast is way too big to ever take on the MAX. I do wish TriMet was more consistent with their posted rules; I’ve also never, ever seen anyone with a stroller actually take their kid out of it and break it down, and that seems to me to take up more room than most dogs would, but you know no fare-checker would ever dress down a family with a stroller the way they sometimes do if there are too many bikes on the traincar or if they decide to enforce the no-dogs rule.
But I’ll also say that it’s a rule that I don’t mind, it really just needs to be much better enforced. As many of the commenters posted, there’s a theme of “no one bothered us, so it must be okay.” It’s pretty standard operating procedure for most people that dogs don’t belong on buses, so why should the MAX be any different? One of the commenters on the other site posted as part of their comment, “if you’re going to break a stated rule, do so considerately at least,” which is all well and good, but is kind of like the definition of pornography– what you may think is considerate could be another person’s personal hell. And what about the people who are then going to break the rule even more inconsiderately? Or if I want to bend another rule, does that mean that I can smoke on the train as long as I’m not blowing it in your face?
Just because there’s not a driver that you have to pass on your way onto the MAX doesn’t somehow give people free rein to break the rules. And I’ve seen how scared of dogs people can be when I’m just walking down the street and so think it’s pretty selfish for people to bring their dogs onboard just because they want what they want. If everybody did that, there would be rampant safety issues for people and animals alike: cramped quarters+dogs on leashes does not equal safety, no matter how well behaved you think your pet is.
