I *love* this question - it's one that's come up a lot in our community over the years. Almost exclusively related to dogs...not pets in general.
We do have an office pet, a turtle named Timmy that I've actually had since I was 4. After nearly 30 years of being around people, Timmy might be the only turtle who actually comes over to the glass when people walk up to the tank, as if to say hi. BUT! Back to more "normal" pets, three things we always remind people of are that: 1 - even friendly well behaved pets can trigger people's allergies 2 - if you end up having more than one pet in the space, you never know how they're going to act towards each other 3 - one person's "friendly" pet is another person's annoying pet. If I'm trying to work while a dog wants to be pet, it's a distraction We've been flexible on any hard rules, and obviously the pets aren't malicious, but almost every time we have pets in the space on a regular basis we've had issues. Things get broken. Something gets peed on. Members get annoyed by a random lick of the hand while they were trying to get work done. So all of this is to say that the answer is as much dependent on the non-pet-owners as it is on the pets and their owners. About once a year a member brings it up to the community and the conversation goes about the same way...and the overall preference (even among people who LIKE the pets) is that we don't have them here all the time. So we tell our members that if you want to bring your well behaved pet in for a visit, that's fine, but it's not good for them to be in the space all day and no matter what they need to be by your side (no roaming). -Alex ------------------ *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 2:31 PM, <ge...@spacekraft.co> wrote: > Hi, > > We're opening up a coworking space in Burnaby, BC, Canada. We're talking > about whether to have the space as pet-friendly or not. I'm pro having > friendly well behaved pets in the space, but what have you guys found? > > Geoff > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
