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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • That sounds so frustrating! Lots of inconsiderate dog owners out there. I don’t know if this is a thing where you are, but we have a thing where a yellow collar or yellow ribbon indicates a dog who needs space. Now that may not actually be true for your dogs but it might encourage some more clued-up dog owners to give you a wider berth. Doesn’t solve the overall thing you were asking about but might help a bit with dog related issues.

    ETA: ‘Please can you help me to…’ would work better for this as well.


  • To add to this, starting with ‘can you not’ is automatically framing it to people who are bothered by this as a negative interaction because the starting premise is negative (‘don’t do the thing’).

    If you reframe it in the opposite way (‘do the thing’) with a ‘please’ to soften it a bit you’ll probably have more luck, eg:

    ‘Please can we keep the dogs untangled?’ (‘We’ also helps here because you’re assuming some of the responsibility for keeping the dogs untangled rather than it sounding like you’re pointing a finger of blame which will get people’s backs up pretty quickly)

    Not autistic but worked in complaint management for a long time and learned how to more effectively get people on side. Also have ADHD and speak without thinking a lot and it helps to understand why whatever I just blurted out annoyed someone!