Is your dog racist?
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Anonymous
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Research has shown pretty clearly that dogs that get leash reactive in response only to people of a certain race are reacting to their owners body language and tension coming down the leash. In other words -- dogs aren't racist, but people are. Even people who think they aren't.
Dogs don't even have sight as a primary sense, they mostly smell things to assess them, including people. Absent something like a big backpack or hat or reflective sunglasses that make the person look like they don't have eyes or something, or extreme body language (for instance with toddlers -- lots of dogs are afraid of toddlers because they work hard to learn to read body language and toddlers are falling all over the place), dogs aren't focused on what people look like. They don't notice skin color. Or the color of other dogs for that matter. It's not a thing for them. |
Anonymous
| My dog is racist against black dogs. A black dog must have scared him once or something. Luckily this doesn’t come up but it makes me irrationally embarrassed. |
Anonymous
| Idk my dog doesn’t really like men except my husband. Maybe I’m subconsciously more on alert when men come into my home but she acts the same way with our male friends as she does with strangers. |
Anonymous
| Our old dog (older rescue) was definitely racist. Current dog doesn’t like anything “weird” like bikes, hats, loud music in headphones, etc etc |
Anonymous
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YES. It is so embarrassing.
I know you're not joking, OP, and there is no owner racism involved here. |
Anonymous
It's lack of exposure, bad experiences and/or tension on leash. Nothing can be definitive one way or another when dogs can't explain. Even some toddlers have preferences and fears, silly as they may be. |
Anonymous
| 11:15 Ha! You hardly see those types of fashion on cities of DC |
Anonymous
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My husband and I have joked that our proudly liberal neighbor probably thinks our white dog is racist. I thought it was just a silly joke but I see now that I was foolish to underestimate the Racist finger-pointing insanity.
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Anonymous
| Our dog only likes Asian people - she is reactive to white women in particular. Not sure why - my husband is Asian, but I dont think we are racist toward his friends! Or me! |
Anonymous
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My dog can be bribed by anyone.
Food is his love language Though he does seem to dislike teen boys a little |
Anonymous
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This is actually a thing with dogs and young children - they can be scared of people who have skin colors they're not used to, scared of big voices, hats, etc.
This never happened with my dog... but when my daughter was a baby, she would scream every time a man approached her, except her father. Never a woman. Skin color didn't matter. |
Anonymous
| What if your dog is a rescue? You don’t know it’s history. |
Anonymous
| My dog got into a tiff with a neighbor dog and henceforth considered that dog (who was very nice) his mortal enemy. The owner was a very pleasant Asian man. My dog then was extremely alert and prone to barking any time he saw anyone that looked vaguely Asian bc he thought the other dog was around. |
Anonymous
My dog is sexist like this too. She may have been abused. We do not know what her life was like in her first three years. |
Anonymous
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My dog growing up was racist against people and hats. So when a black cop showed up to investigate the robbery of our home, which the dog slept through, the dog would not stop barking.
FWIW, my dog saw many black people in our home and on our walks. We couldn't figure it out. |