Sometimes people have asked me if they can make a fuss of my dog (this is my older dog, or previous dogs. Finn makes sure that no one he does not know wants to come anywhere near arm's length of him!) and I have always said yes, as my previous dogs have always liked people. In fact Red, my older dog right now, gets very concerned if children seem worried by him.
I remember a couple of years ago we went to a jousting exhibition event and took him with us. While we were watching a display of firearms through the ages (Red took ZERO notice of the extremely noisy cannon going off 30 feet away, despite the people doing the display saying that all dogs in the area would run!). There was a little girl with her family near us. When she saw Red, she took a sharp breath in and edged away. I just stayed where I was, holding his lead. Red looked back and forth between me and this girl a couple of times then, despite all the noise going on, dropped to roll in the grass next to me and do that INCREDIBLY cute thing they do with both paws over their eyes and muzzle, peeking out at this girl every few seconds to make sure she was still looking at him. Yes, he's a tart 💖💖 After a few minutes he sat back up next to me, on the side so he was between me and this girl who then (admittedly without permission) stretched out a hand and just stroked a fingertip up his ear. The one time I didn't mind not being asked, because that dog was just SO happy this girl had made the tiniest little fuss of him. He had quite the fan club by the end of the day, with the couple of other kids that loved making a fuss of him.
So yes - asking the owner is important. But - even more important to my mind - is whether the DOG wants to be fussed. There may be any number of reasons for the owner to say no - dog is in training, or is an assistance dog, can be easily scared by quick movements, or they've recently adopted the dog and aren't entirely sure how he'll react, just to list a few - but even if they say yes, if the dog says no, that's it.
This flow chart by the hugely talented Emma Judson illustrates this nicely:
Emma does commercial illustration and can be found here: Cartoon 'Ems and is also the hugely talented pen behind Foul Mouthed Fido
