The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

Presumably at the interview it's pretty obvious what's going on, and people ought to be fairly self-filtering about this. Diversity is good, right? You ought to be matching the company to your needs anyhow.

Then one day I brought my Bullmastiff in because not many people were going to be in the office that day, and she's content with just sitting under my desk for hours on end. Girls in the front office would bring in their dogs who were pretty well behaved. It was nice meeting other peoples dogs.

Then another developer brought in his Beagle. A dog howling every 10 minutes is very, very distracting, especially in an open-layout office. Someone in customer service brought in their 1 year old Labrador, who I'm convinced was fed a diet consisting of canine Red Bull.

At some point, people in graphics started bringing their cats in. I came in one morning to find a cat on my chair. I did not bring my dog that day or things would have probably gotten very interesting.

If I took anything away from that, I'd say pets are okay on Fridays, or holidays when not everyone is in the building. But for every day, pets are just too dang distracting. Eating out of trashcans, snooping around the office, scaring visitors, and just people in general wasting time playing with pets all day. The biggest benefit is taking your pooch for a walk at lunch time is a great break.

We have probably between one and two dozen dogs that come in regularly. There is a "doggy committee" made up of volunteers that meets about once a month. No software to manage them yet, but a little bit of occasional drama about them. I can imagine it being more intense if we had three dozen dogs each day.

I get along with cats easier than dogs, but I love having either around. They and their owners are one of my favourite parts of the place I work. I sit beside someone with a dog who greets me every day, and it might be the best part of my whole day.

Anyway, I just want to throw some non-hate into the top level of this post. I get that some people do not like dogs or are unfortunately allergic. There are clearly reasons to not have dogs around, and it simply would not work in many environments. But there are also a lot of dog owners and people who are just cool with the companionship, and for them dog-presence is a serious plus.

Either way, it's great to have insight into how other organisations dealt with this stuff.

So not exactly an easy solution as suggested.

When there are medical bills involved.