Can't visit friend as her dog is racist

[CaliforniaCookie]

I was making plans to visit one of my best friends.
She is white and I'm mixed race.

She told me she was concerned as her new dog who i haven't met, is racist.

Anytime he sees a person who is not white he goes mental.

This is honestly not a fake post.

Not sure how to respond. Advice welcome.

🙄

Dogs see white and black, so they may get confused with darker skins. But they get used to it, so no worries

my small dog Is like this but only with black males for some reason, he's perfectly fine with black women and girls absolutely no idea why as we live in a very multicultural area where we mix well with all races. it can be embarrassing at times and I have had people call my dog a racist.
He also hates hi viz and postal workers.
dogs can be strange.

The dog is not racist. The dog is a dog which means it has tiny intelligence and sees any unusual (to it) human as a threat. The greater variety of human skin colour the dog encounters the more it will habituate to difference. By meeting the dog and reinforcing positive behaviour (treats etc) you might be able to cure it of its ‘racism’. But this is not your problem and imo it’s your friend who should sort her dog out.

It is a socialisation issue, it very much depends on who the dog was introduced to and was around when they were growing up. If predominantly white people then when they see a black person they are startled and react accordingly. It’s the same if a dog never met people wearing high vis jackets or a hat or just something different to what they are used to, the first time they see it, it will startle them. This is why socialisation is so key when a puppy is younger and those dogs that were pups and were unable to be properly socialised during lockdown are easily startled. I have a black friend who got a puppy during lockdown and when she started to have visitors who were white the dog was not impressed, however time and further socialisation has meant the dog is fine with everyone now.

This is ridiculous

I am asian and I can say I have also been a victim of chihuahua racism. But in the end she fell in love with me and wouldn’t leave me alone 🤣

I have a black dog and lots of other dogs don't like him and their owners often say they just don't like black dogs. The theory is that being black makes it harder for other dogs to read their facial expression due to black absorbing light. Never heard of disliking humans of colour but while unlikely could it be something similar, i.e. they find it harder to read facial cues (as well as just not being used to people of colour)?

It's more likely it just hadn't seen such a person in that 12 weeks. Could just as easily had the same reaction to someone in a hi-viz coat or a big hat.

Just don't go there then.Now how on earth can a dog be racist.

We had a dog who went mad at anyone not white, anyone wearing a hoodie or any postman/woman. No idea why, it was a nightmare.

My pug is like this. She will walk passed white people no problem. But if anyone has very dark skin she goes mad at them.

It's very embarrassing

That's cos cats are cool.

My family is white and when we were kids my sister was good friends with a black girl who often visited and whose family dog was expecting puppies, one of which we'd been promised. So eventually we got a black puppy who soon settled in to his new home.

One day the friend's brother, who had never been to our house before, came with a message for his sister and our dog just went mad!!! It was much more than an over enthusiastic greeting, he bolted across and almost licked him to death!!! I remember my own brother laughing and saying, "It must be because you're both black."

Apparently, our puppy was the runt of the litter and the friend's brother was carrying him away in a newspaper when he noticed he moved and so he dashed back. Seems our dog never forgot who saved his life either. :)

She needs to expose her dogs to more diverse range of people.

I think people of different races can have different scents too (eg apparently Chinese people think that white people smell like milk) so this might be what the dog is picking up on too as being 'unusual'

Bloody hilarious 😂 😂

When I lived in South Africa years ago, people used to say all the time that they kept dogs to keep black people off their property, and many people there said it was a well known that dogs just disliked black people. And many black South Africans were absolutely terrified of dogs as they did get attacked by them frequently. I’m pretty sure not due to being racist, but a scientific fact of dogs seeing certain colours differently.

This dog story reminds me of an ex’s mother and her dog. The animal went ballistic when I first went over to their home and she had the AUDACITY to tell me that the dog disliked “colored” people, as he was owned by a black family before he was adopted 😂 I’m not kidding…

😂😂😂😂

I’m mixed race.

I had to sit through a work tea break listening to a racist colleague declare his delight at Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs trained by the “white” farmer owners to attack “natives” in Southern Africa.

Dogs can struggle to read black faces, canine or human, but your friend needs to get out with her dog and meet a variety of people.

My dog hated priests.

My old rescue dog detested children (wouldn’t be aggressive to them but would give them a very wide berth and bark if they came too close (so he was always kept on lead when out!)). I assume he was mistreated by children in his previous home.

However, he obviously couldn’t tell the difference between a child and a short adult - several friends just couldn’t work out why he didn’t seem to like them 😆

My cats hate blokes. One of them glowers at any man that visits

I had a dog who barked at anyone who was smoking cannabis