Dogs are wonderful beings, there’s no doubt about it. But not everyone is equally thrilled about being in their vicinity, often due to fears and phobias.

Take this redditor’s neighbor, for instance. For him, the fear of dogs was so strong, he had to ask the OP not to enter the elevator he was in with her Chiweenie. But the dog owner disregarded his request, which later made her wonder if she was a jerk to her neighbor.

Scroll down to find the full story and the netizens’ verdict below, where you will also find Bored Panda’s interview with a Canada Research Chair in Clinical Cyberpsychology, Dr. Stéphane Bouchard, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about phobias.

It’s important for dog owners to remember that not everyone is equally fond of their beloved pet

Image credits: Pascal Mager (not the actual image)

This woman’s neighbor was fearful of dogs, which made her wonder if she was a jerk for exposing him to her Chiweenie

Image credits: LightFieldStudios (not the actual image)

Image credits: Derrick Treadwell (not the actual image)

Image credits: Fuzzy_Divide_3661

Some people fear all kinds of dogs the same, often due to cynophobia

While dogs are the most popular pet, believed to be man’s best friend, not everyone is equally fond of them; and there can be many reasons why. But for quite a few individuals, it’s fear that stands in the way of them and doggos, even if they’re told to be the goodest of bois.

For people with such a fear, the fact that the owner considers their dog friendly might not change a thing about how they feel. The size of the pet might not make much difference, either, as a seven-pound Chihuahua can make someone feel as anxious as a 70-pound German shepherd would.

For those who aren’t that scared of dogs, it might seem odd that something this big can be equally scary as something this tiny (and shivering). But fear is rarely ever rational, especially if it’s a full-fledged phobia. While it is difficult to determine how many people exactly live with a phobia of dogs—known as cynophobia—some sources suggest that roughly one-in-three people with an animal phobia have an overwhelming fear of dogs. In general, phobias are believed to affect roughly 9% of the population in the US.

“By definition, a phobia involves emotional and behavioral reactions that are hard to regulate and more intense than most people would have,” Dr. Stéphane Bouchard noted in a recent interview with Bored Panda. “Depending on the severity of the phobia and the context, these reactions may be impossible to regulate. Some people will break into tears, run away from situations, or freeze. As with all phobias, different features of the feared stimuli, in this case dogs, can trigger the panic reaction. Some people with dog phobia will be afraid of dogs of any size or breed, while some others will be more afraid of larger dogs or barking dogs, for example.”

Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual image)

Living with cynophobia is not easy, especially with dogs being the most popular choice for a pet

While living with fear of any kind is a far from pleasant experience, fearing dogs might be especially difficult bearing in mind just how strongly enmeshed in people’s lives they are. Nowadays, close to a half of households in the US own a dog as a pet, which they have to take outside regularly. Not only that, quite a few people take their dogs along on hikes, to run errands, or even to the office, not to mention the pet-friendly restaurants and cafes.

While a person with cynophobia is probably unlikely to choose a pet-friendly restaurant for a night out, they can’t avoid going out on the street, where they are likely to encounter a dog. In a piece for the Pacific Standard, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, author of Travels With Casey: My Journey Through Our Dog-Crazy Country, wrote about how such situations make people with cynophobia feel and cited one saying: “I’d question everywhere I was invited. If there were a chance I’d meet a dog, I wouldn’t leave the house.”

To make matters worse, cynophobia is just one of the numerous phobias that make people’s lives difficult. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH), phobias are divided into categories based on the cause of the negative reaction, with the main categories including agoraphobia – the fear of being alone, social phobia – the fear of being watched or humiliated while doing something in front of others, and specific phobia, which, as you probably gathered, relates to any specific object or situation that evokes irrational fear. That means a person can have a phobia of basically anything in life, even such seemingly unalarming things as cotton wool (the fear of which is called sidonglobophobia) or holes (trypophobia), just to name a couple.

Image credits: Megan (Markham) Bucknall (not the actual image)

“A phobia may be associated with significant distress and limitations in one’s personal, social, or professional life,” the expert says

“Phobias must be taken seriously, although it is important to be more nuanced when considering phobic reactions in children,” Dr. Bouchard told Bored Panda. “Many children will have phobic-like reactions to strangers, clowns, doctors, insects or large dogs. In these cases, it is important to see if the fears are appropriate to the children’s age and see if they disappear by themselves over time.

“Most people with a specific phobia will find ways to cope with their phobia and it may go unnoticed. It may nevertheless be associated with significant distress and limitations in one’s personal, social, or professional life,” the expert added. “I have provided psychotherapy to people with spider phobia who sold their house because they feared ‘spiders made nests’ in the walls of their bedroom, to people who refused to give blood transfusions to their children because they were too afraid of blood and needles, or refused significant work promotions or attending their children’s weddings in other countries because they were too afraid to fly in an airplane. Phobias are real and intense reactions associated with distress. They are also associated with avoidance behaviors that may appear unnecessary or exaggerated. But not taking people’s phobias seriously is not helping anyone.”

Summing up, Dr. Bouchard noted that by definition, a phobia is a marked fearful or anxious reaction associated with avoidance that causes clinically significant distress or impairment. “It actually needs to affect a person’s life to be considered a phobia, although some people endure the situation or have developed such elaborated avoidance strategies that it does not seem to affect them.”

Whether or not the OP’s neighbor had cynophobia, his reaction to the dog was an expressive enough sign that he didn’t want to be in the same elevator as the dog and its owner. But the latter didn’t care much about his request, which is why the majority of redditors deemed the woman a jerk. Some, however, disagreed with the verdict. Both sides shared their thoughts in the comments.

Fellow netizens believed that the dog owner was a jerk to her neighbor

Some people, however, shared a slightly different opinion

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