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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]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.  [/b]

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. [/quote]

Not true at all. It's mostly dogs who have a predisposition to fear/anxiety responses, AND who react to an appearance that is not present in their home and/or their usual environment. It happens with kids too.

My dog has a dominant personality, and loves all humans (but he hates male dogs that are larger than he is!). I foster dogs for a shelter. Some of them have those reactions, because they're fearful by nature, and perhaps lived in places with all-white people. Others don't, even though they might come from the same region: I don't know who they've seen, but generally those dogs are more outgoing in general. Even more interesting: I've fostered pregnant dogs whose litters were diversely reactive to skin color. Even though they were born in my house, I trained them in the same way, and they were exposed to the same neighborhood!

So you can take your pseudo-research elsewhere :-)

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