I take my dog to a 2 vets who are West Indian. They were recommended by a friend. I am white. The unfortunate side effect seems to be that my dog is extremely suspicious of black people. I must confess I do not know if she would have been suspicious of blacks anyway, but other ethnic groups don’t seem to bother her. If I am right about the connection then her familiarity with black people (they all want to give me a shot) has caused her to be aggressive.
The funny thing about this dog is that she will accept certain black people.
For the record, I’ve got two dogs, one of them a twelve-pound miniature Schnoodle and the other a mutt that’s about the same size.
My schnoodle greets people by running up and begging for pets while hopping on his two back legs. My mutt greets people by running toward them and skidding up to them on her back in an attempt to get her belly rubbed. It amazes me the number of people who are totally terrified of these dogs.
I live an area that’s probably 40% black, 30% white, and 30% hispanic. When I’m walking my dogs, the black folks definitely do their best to avoid my dogs even when their leashes are retracted enough that there’s no way for the dogs to get to them. In general, I don’t even wait to see how they react to them anymore, but I instead immediately start to retract the leashes almost completely.
Of course, anyone who says “All” in the context of something like this is of course going to be wrong.
For what it’s worth, though, that seems to be more prevalent among the adults. Most of the kids who see me ask if they bite, and when I tell them it’s safe they’re totally unafraid of my dogs.
Interestingly enough, I used to deliver pizzas at a place where over half our drivers were Russian Jewish immigrants. In that particular case, all but one of them was terrified of any dogs and absolutely refused to get out of their car if there was a dog loose in the area.
Keep in mind that I’m talking about yapping chihuahuas, not stalking pitbulls. I know there’s the idea of being cautious around unfamiliar animals and all that, but there is a point where one hits Maximum Absurdity…
I lived in Detroit for 20 years, in ethnically mixed (mostly black) neighborhoods for 19 of them. I got my first Dane in 1971. One day I came home from work to learn that my son and my SO had taken 'Chinka out for a walk. A black kid came along with his German shepherd, announced that his dog could beat her, and sicced him onto her. 'Chinka picked up the other dog by the neck, shook him, and dropped him - dead, presumably of a broken neck. She was, after all, with “her” boy, whom she clearly perceived herself to be protecting.
A couple of years later, when I began showing my first showdog, I discovered that there was a black family in northern Ohio who were breeding and showing Danes. In later years the Ohio Dane breeder became well-known both as a breeder and as a show handler in that region. The following year I got to know a black man who bred and obedience trained Dobies. He was also a professional handler. A couple of years later I helped a black novice breeder who was having trouble getting her bitch bred. The stud’s (white female) owner was out of town, and neither the bitch owner nor the stud owner’s husband had any experience at such things (letting large dogs loose to “do their thing” - unless they are housemates who know each other very well, and the bitch has been previously bred - has as much potential hazard to the animals as an unsupervised breeding by large farm animals).
Several of my Dane pups went to black homes, too.
I’d also like to point out that Bill Cosby co-owns a dog (a terrier?) which, IIRC, was a Westminster BIS winner.
In every one of those Detroit neighborhoods where I lived, there were black families who owned dogs. They were of various sizes, but German shepherds, Dobies, and Rottweilers were all very popular. Not to mention the ubiquitous “pit bulls”.
One thing I have noticed is that dogs “absorb” the feelings their owners have of other people. If that feeling is adverse, the dog will act accordingly.
Changing times man. Back when I got into bikes, you could count the number of blacks on harleys on one hand.
Now there are entire clubs of African American riders. Cool dudes too.
So dog/bike ownership wasn’t all that popular before among this particular subset of American culture. All sterotypes have a basis in fact. Doesn’t make it true.
Point out that episode of the Cosby Show where the kids found a dog and kept it (until the owner claimed it). your girlfriend can’t dispute TV, TV would never lie to us.
PS racism can be the glue that holds a relationship together, provided you both hate the same people
Disagree that black dog owners are a recent subset, like black bikers. That might be true in some areas of the country, but my family’s from lowcountry South Carolina and rural West Tennessee – all these far-flung cousins and their neighbors own or have owned dogs for generations. The Tennessee folks tend to have more ‘hounds’ – Bassetts, Beagles, Yellow Labs and such – but black dog ownership isn’t exactly new.
