This happens with me and my on-the-autism-spectrum friend who also does it. We somehow managed to have a lot of the same traits while being entirely differently neurodivergent.

Our conversations are very ehm… ‘dynamic’ as we have to constantly loop back to point B that got lost somewhere in the path to point E and also have you considered point M?

Nobody else can follow the train of thought.

Literally the main thing learned during Covid - I fucking love touching my face. It’s skin picking for me.

I heartily recommend an unreasonably large mug. Get one big enough and it takes ages to go cold.

This isn’t necessarily the case - they have a wild variety of coat colours and markings, ear floppiness is variable. They tend to have slightly wider snoots than their wild cousins.

This probably is still a wild one though.

Source: lived with someone who kept them!

That sounds so frustrating! Lots of inconsiderate dog owners out there. I don’t know if this is a thing where you are, but we have a thing where a yellow collar or yellow ribbon indicates a dog who needs space. Now that may not actually be true for your dogs but it might encourage some more clued-up dog owners to give you a wider berth. Doesn’t solve the overall thing you were asking about but might help a bit with dog related issues.

ETA: ‘Please can you help me to…’ would work better for this as well.

To add to this, starting with ‘can you not’ is automatically framing it to people who are bothered by this as a negative interaction because the starting premise is negative (‘don’t do the thing’).

If you reframe it in the opposite way (‘do the thing’) with a ‘please’ to soften it a bit you’ll probably have more luck, eg:

‘Please can we keep the dogs untangled?’ (‘We’ also helps here because you’re assuming some of the responsibility for keeping the dogs untangled rather than it sounding like you’re pointing a finger of blame which will get people’s backs up pretty quickly)

Not autistic but worked in complaint management for a long time and learned how to more effectively get people on side. Also have ADHD and speak without thinking a lot and it helps to understand why whatever I just blurted out annoyed someone!

If you’re into gaming at all, the National Videogame Museum in Nottingham was worth the trip - we went when it was fairly new so I’d imagine it’s been expanded a bit since.