So if there’s a pet ban for whatever reason it’s reasonable to extend an exception to help those with significant suffering while it would be unreasonable to extend the same to me.
The difference is, if I have a space that's not good for people with disabilities (up a flight of stairs, narrow doorways, etc) I don't have to worry about them renting it (or they have a funding source to help make improvements).
If I have a space that's not good for pets people will still force a way to bring in their pets. At a certain point it's even a welfare issue for the pets! If they are in a tiny apartment of the 4th story of a walk-up and there is no lawn or anything, that's an inhumane place to keep a dog!
The local hardware store used to allow pets in (mainly dogs) because they have a relatively large pet section.
They've stopped this after too many incidents with the dogs relieving themselves on the merchandise.
Out of curiosity, how does one housetrain a dog such that it respects building interiors other than its own home? Every dog I’ve ever know was very good about knowing not to relieve itself in its own building, but considered every other building fair play.
That's absolutely wild. Every dog I've known, except for a few with issues, seems to know not to relieve themselves in any building if they know not to relieve themselves in their own building. No specialized training, just regular house training.
Perhaps a hardware store is too big and too non-den like that some dogs don't consider it a den.
It's usually about surfaces and smells, not home vs away.
The misbehaving dogs that the GP mentions are probably not terribly well-behaved around home either.
As for marking, that's a separate issue; it's correctly pack training the dog so it doesn't feel the need to mark everything.
Only take a few hours of this to fix the behavior.
You don't need bans for stuff like that if people are attentive and thoughtful. People with pets consider other customers in a shop, shopkeepers consider people who are deeply troubled without the support of their pets, and a locally appropriate and nuanced equilibrium shakes out.
Unfortunately, we've largely allowed that prerequisite sense of community to erode in many people and many social interactions have become a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos, so formal and rigid policies have to take the place of subjective consideration.
Ultimately pet bans, in most cases, reduce to a proxy for limiting damage and repair costs. In some cases they reduce to more general liability reduction. In all those cases there is a much more straightforward way to address the intent: insurance. Renter’s insurance, travel insurance, whatever.
The only valid cases for banning pets is “you’d be introducing an allergen into a place shared by people with allergies” or “an existing pet is already present and introducing a new one would cause conflicts with the incumbent pet”.
Any public place?
What outdoor publicly owned spaces where you believe pets should be allowed ban them?
The hypocrisy of pet "ownership" is blatant...