I don't need to correct :p One Down looks like a boy and is one too! I call an animal it when I don't know its gender, but I call it a she or he when I know what it is. I don't like guessing genders and making a fool out of me, so, I just ask. :D
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I don't need to correct :p One Down looks like a boy and is one too! I call an animal it when I don't know its gender, but I call it a she or he when I know what it is. I don't like guessing genders and making a fool out of me, so, I just ask. :D
I'm a little guilty of calling dogs and he or she, especially at work. For the LONGEST time, about a month...one of our fosters was called her by me, I thought HE was a girl. HIS name was Brownie, I mean, come on, that's a girly name!! :rolleyes:
I do correct people when they call Mikey a girl, I mean how did you not know by his name??:confused:
I prefere people correct me, I hate getting it wrong and you cant rely on names and collar/leash colours, I know tons of male dogs with purple or pink collars and leashes and names like "Shelby" ..and those are the owners that get mad when I call their dog "she" lol. names really are not a clue, I know plenty of dogs named: Buddy, Rider/Ryder, Red, Blue, Harley, Sky, Hershey, Sam, Charlie, Seven etc.. of BOTH genders. in fact the majority of Sam's, Charlie's, and Harley's I know are FEMALE, the rest are split about half/half. I am always so afraid to get the gender wrong that I avoid using he/she altogether I will say instead used the dogs name and skip over pronounes entirly, which is not that easy and sounds awkward lol
thats said when people get mine wronge I DO correct them, Happy is often a "he"..she is a girl darn it lol, most of the others dont really get mixed up by other people.
My great grandson asked me yesterday why all my kitties are "girls"..... I told him that was not by choice, I didn't pick "girls only", it just ended up that way. (I picked the kitty or they picked me and only once on the way home did I check to see if I had a boy or a girl)
I'm a groomer and I was just noticing this week how utterly offended people seem to be when you misgender their dog and I think it's pretty funny.
I'm pretty sure dogs don't have personal gender expressions, and there's no way to ask them which pronouns they prefer even if they did. We see a very large volume of dog kids, and if we don't know the dog, especially if mom is holding them, how is there any way for us to magically know the sex of the dog?
Besides, determining some things as feminine and others as masculine is completely a social, human construct, dogs don't recognize pink flowery collars as feminine. And at any rate, I tend to dress Niņo in pink and purple collars and leads and have been known to paint his nails, and I have dyed him pink before.
And we have a lot of clients with gender neutral names and female dogs with masculine sounding names. Like Bob the tiny female poodle, for instance. And then there's Eliza who lifts her leg to pee on all the trees she passes.
So really it's just humans making a fuss over something dogs don't care about at all.
I call them all pretty. I will say, "Oh, what a pretty boy you are!"
I prefer he or she when the gender is known. If not, a guess is fine. One pet peeve (no pun intended) of mine is when someone knows the gender of their pet, and insist on calling him/her an it.
Since I often make the mistake myself, I try not to correct people. With me, you can tell me the cat is MR MEOW and 5 minutes later I will call him SHE. it's Simply a dyslexic thing. If you say right I will instinctively turn left. I have even read words that are not in a sentence to make it mean the opposite. (EX/ if I read a written letter that said "He did want to go to the party" I might read it as "He did NOT want to go to the party") And not even notice until rereading.
So, I do it, and other people do it, and I try not to judge or correct them. It is not a personal insult and most likely totally unintentional.