I will smile and lie and say that I love animals, but in truth I do not.
Animal lovers are a weird kind of people, and being honest with them is not the best policy.
Telling a dog owner that you don’t like dogs has the same result as kicking their dog. They will treat you like you are morally suspect, because you don’t like their stupid pets. I am never mean to animals, I just don’t like having them around me. When I go on an HVAC service call and someone has a big dog that is sniffing me, I ask the client to put the dog away. I will also make a note on their account, so that future HVAC techs know what they are walking into. “Oh, but my dog is so nice” says every HVAC client ever, even when the dog is not particularly nice. There was one time that I had to install a new central A/C unit in a lady’s backyard. It was a fenced in backyard, where she let her dogs run wild. I asked her to put them away when I worked on the air conditioner, but she didn’t do it. Since I had to go in and out the gate to bring in my tools and the replacement A/C parts, one of the dogs managed to escape. She said she would sue me if the dog got hurt, so I just loaded up my tools and the replacement A/C parts and drove away. She can fix her own air conditioning.