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I can well imagine if you are 2 yrs old and there is an over excited " huge" black dog with " great big" white teeth, slobbery tongue, long waggy tail barreling towards you, you might be more than terrified! My Mum's dog goes insane every time she sees a black man, full on barking, running round like crazy if off-lead. Might sound stupid - I certainly would think so, but my 15 month old Cairn Terrier barks like crazy everytime she sees a black or Asian person. Racism is an ugly concept and an ugly word associated with an ongoing, systemic problem in our society, deeply rooted in history.i don't understand why but outside MY GERMAN SHEPERD barks at any white people it encounterS, and he doesn't do that with poc, he growl at my white friend and don't apreciate being petted by them but he is chill with the black ones, my sister in law is half black half white and she have a very pale skin and he don't like her either. The psychological concept of “mirroring” has been proposed before, and it certainly is a real phenomenon in dogs: mirroring means taking emotional and psychological cues from someone else, and dogs have evolved an amazingly empathetic capacity for this with their human owners. A second reason, one that I’ve never seen explored, is that early dogs/domesticated wolves originated in lighter-skinned societies.

This is a conditioned emotional response (CER) – your dog’s association with seeing people of the novel appearance is now positive one rather than a negative one.Perhaps the people who report “racist” dogs have similar (unconscious) thoughts of their own; the dog is simply physicalizing an emotion their owners are too civilized or intellectualized to show. That means you might need to go out of your way, and out of your own comfort zone, to ensure your dog makes friends with a virtual rainbow coalition of people! It’s nothing more than a theory (developed after my horror at my dog)s reaction to the very nice Indian bloke! Fight and flight are two heads of the same coin; neither is balanced, peaceful acceptance; and both should be discouraged.

My instinct is that when we see dogs’ behavior, we have the intuition that dogs might be reacting based on a person’s race or ethnicity,” Dr. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The “black/white” (dark/light) skin color distinction is certainly a visual one; so the fact that dogs can pick up on that while they might leave other racial distinctions aside is fairly predictable. Although the “etc” implies taking it even further, since it doesn’t directly emphasize people of different races, nationalities, and cultures, it’s easy for that to be overlooked, especially if you don’t routinely run into people who might fit into any of these categories.I wonder if dogs are aware of 'difference' ie that human has got black skin but all the others have got pinky-grey skin. Eric doesn't like black labs, he barks at them, I'm pretty sure it's because, when in the vets, a black lab came and licked his face when he was a tiny pup on my knee as he was most affronted at the time. I always wear a hat (and different sorts - cap, trilby etc), so it's really not that he wasn't used to them. In both cases there was nothing unsual about the way they were dressed - the Asian lady was wearing a headscarf but otherwise just the usual trousers, coat and boots etc.

This subreddit is a great starting point for a lot of information, but you should always verify and expand upon what you've read from reputable sources before putting it to use in your daily life. I don’t know what oriental people eat a ‘lot’ of, but it seems sensible to me that a very different diet may mean a different smell. And cyclists (he's even been known to bark at a pedestrian who was walking to his bike, was impressed at that insight).

When we got our dog we went to the puppy parties at our vet's practice to help with socialising her. She's generally speaking a lovely, friendly dog, not particularly 'barky' when we're out walking normally, and I've defnitely noticed the difference with black or Asian people. Namely: your dog gets along just fine with other dogs, mailmen, skateboarders…then barks and lunges quite obviously at black or darker-skinned people. This is a major reason dogs tend to hate mailmen (they carry big bulky bags), plumbers and workmen (they wear giant boots, clanky tool belts, and scary-looking hardhats). The big reason any dogs REMAIN “racist”, no matter what initial cause of the behavior, is that not enough time is spent on counterconditioning.