Animals & Pets

This is a short one, but a very weird one nonetheless lmao.

I had a guy walk in with an annoyed look on his face, like he was already beefing with me before he even saw me.

I gave him the usual greeting and asked how I could help him. He was just staring towards someone standing at the elevator, and took a second to respond to me.

He asks, “is that a service animal?” And he points to the guy at the elevator then our “No Pets (except service animals)” sign. From where I was, I couldn’t see the animal. But I said “If they have a pet, I’m sure it is a service animal.”

Then he says “Do you guys allow smoking?” And I say no, and he immediately says “so you allow pets that aren’t service animals, but no smoking?”

And I’m just like “Once again, I’m sure that is a service animal.”

I didn’t check the person in and I couldn’t see the animal, but I highly doubt someone is just walking a pet through our lobby when they know they can’t have one.

The whole interaction was just a bit surreal. It was like he was annoyed at me from an earlier conversation, but we had never spoke before. He started that conversation with context that I didn’t have.

I immediately recognized he was confrontational though and wasn’t having it.

After informing him of the no smoking policy, he says “Okay, alright.” And just leaves.

I went to the back to look at the cameras to see the dog. It wasn’t wearing a service vest (I know it’s not required), but it had a handkerchief typing thing around its collar. It was sitting down, making no noise, and attentive to the owner. Even when a second person walked up to the elevator. When the owner started walking, the dog walked too.

Based on that behavior alone, it was clearly a well trained animal.

Just a very strange interaction. Right after that I got a lovely couple doing a state road trip. They had everything planned out and organized. No hassle at all, and made good conversation.

I have one player in my party who refuses to fight animals, it is part of her character as a druid and also part of her actual personality. Usually this isn't a problem and has actually lead to some cool encounters where she managed to befriend the creatures they where fighting. In the past if she failed at solving he situation peacefully she would just focus her attention on the other enemies. But now I want to have a big encounter where they have to hunt an animal and I'm not sure how to deal with his player because I'm afraid she'll just decide not to participate in the fight. I don't want this to hapen because it's supposed to be a big encounter. How can I deal with this without forcing her to go against her character's morals?

Edit: This post got way more replies than I expected, thanks for all your replies. I'm going to change the encounter to helping the animal instead of killing it, that way I can still have a sort of "hunting encounter" for them to catch the animal before they can help it.

For those of you asking why I designed an encounter around killing an animal when I have a player who clearly doesn't want to which is a valid question. I designed the campaign before I knew it was going to be a problem. A main storyline is that there is something that is affecting regular animals causing them to be dangerous. I've already put a lot of work in so I don't want to change it too much. The party should, hopefully, figure this out either after this encounter or the next one. Which will shift the focus more to fighting the cause rather than the animals themself as many of you suggested.

I've always grown up with dogs but as an adult I was never able to have one due to renting and work commitments. However a few years ago we bought a house and my boyfriend wfh and we were finally able to get a dog. I literally just love him so much he makes life so much better. Sometimes when we are out on walks I just watch him trotting about about and sniffing and it just fills me with so much happiness. I thought this would be like a honeymoon period and eventually fade out a bit but I've had him for nearly 3 years and I still can't get over how much I love him. I prefer his company over my friends any day. Anyone else weirdly obsessed with their pets

My 3 year old loves all things farm animals. Cows sheep goats pigs etc. Where I can take him where he can see them or maybe even pet some of them? We've been on some hikes near farms with cows and he loves it