Anonymous wrote:Mine is...ableist? Has a big problem with the mentally ill or those on drugs. In our neighborhood this is 99% black men, so I do worry he looks racist, but it's really a reaction to behavior he deems aberrant like screaming, lunging, stumbling, etc. He can sense someone in this category before I even see them, does not react well when they approach us on patios asking for money. He is totally fine with people of all races who don't fit this specific profile.

Anonymous wrote:What kind of training is given to a dog to make them an "-ist"?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dog can be bribed by anyone.

Food is his love language

Though he does seem to dislike teen boys a little

The last one. Once while in the car waiting at a red light, saw what looked like HS boys get off the city bus and a lady with her dog were sitting on the grass nearby when the dog just started barking at that group of boys and kept barking until they were further away. Don't know if woman was afraid of that group of boys or dog smelled something or something all together. Don't remember if any of them wore a hat or poncho or something out of the ordinary. Not sure if it matters - the boys were white and so was the woman.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dog can be bribed by anyone.

Food is his love language

Though he does seem to dislike teen boys a little

The last one. Once while in the car waiting at a red light, saw what looked like HS boys get off the city bus and a lady with her dog were sitting on the grass nearby when the dog just started barking at that group of boys and kept barking until they were further away. Don't know if woman was afraid of that group of boys or dog smelled something or something all together. Don't remember if any of them wore a hat or poncho or something out of the ordinary. Not sure if it matters - the boys were white and so was the woman.

Anonymous wrote:My dog can be bribed by anyone.

Food is his love language

Though he does seem to dislike teen boys a little

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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

Anonymous wrote: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 wrote: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.