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Recently, the City of St. Louis passed an ordinance allowing dogs to dine with their human companions. The ordinance limits the area a dog may roam to outside dining venues like patios and street walkways, where Fido can lay in peace while picking up scraps from the dinner table. The Mayor, a dog owner himself, gleefully signed the new law into effect under the pomp and circumstance of a ceremony at one of the city's restaurants.

Even though the law restricts dogs to outside dining areas, it is still a terrible idea on a number of levels. On one level is the food safety issues that arise when a dog is allowed anywhere near a restaurant. Then, there is just the simple adherence to personal safety.

Restaurants have a difficult enough time trying to navigate the potentially debilitating event of a food-borne illness outbreak. Not only do restaurant operators have to be concerned with product safety, they also contend with employee hygienic practices and food production processes. On top of that, they have to deal with a general public that invariably refuses to wash their hands after using the restroom. Many studies suggest that over 75% of restaurant patrons zip up and head straight out of the restroom without sanitizing their hands.

And now we want to throw dogs into this volatile food safety mix?

Dogs present many food safety and sanitation problems, with the most obvious being the feces that they inevitably leave behind. Feces of any kind, much less a dog's, contains potentially dangerous bacteria that can be transmitted through cross contamination into the food of a restaurant. Feces attract flies and mosquitoes, two species known for transmitting food-borne illnesses. If flies and mosquitoes are rampant in an eating establishment, the place will be cited by health inspectors. Dogs just exacerbate an already serious food safety issue.

And what about the scores of people that pet Fido? Are they going to wash their hands after doing that? Most likely, they will return to their table and immediately pick up their juicy burger with Fido's germs and bacteria on their hands. A food-borne illness episode is waiting under the fingernails of the person that pets a dog.

Dogs are fierce territorial animals. Allowing dogs into a restaurant or an outside facility will exacerbate dog's aggressive tendencies towards other dogs. Add to that an owner feeding the dog from the table and we have a combustible scenario where one or more dogs could become territorial and fight for the scraps or just fight because one dog's butt hole doesn't smell right. Dogs attack humans and especially children who make sudden, unexpected movements towards them. Why would a restaurant owner risk that happening and spend the last of the restaurant's resources fighting a lawsuit?

Allowing dogs into restaurants is the latest attempt by dog owners to bring Fido closer to human status. What's next: Fido sitting by its owner in the dentist office? Fido ensconced next to their best friend on a roller coaster? The last time I checked, dogs don't invite me over to share what they are eating out of their bowl. I know my dog doesn't.

Keep a restaurant safe by keeping the dogs out!

Learn more about this author, Keith Bailey.
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