My wife’s neice and her fiancee visited last night-and our Australian Shepherd wasn’t very friendly to him. She barked at the door, and barked at him-he held out his hand, but the dog would not go near him. Why would a family dog have such a strange reaction like this? She normally likes people-but in this case, i don’t see it happening.
Is her fiancee the Devil incarnate? 'Cuz y’know, that would explain a lot.
Maybe he smelled a little off to the dog.
For a while I thought that my dog was racist. She would consistently growl at just one ethnic group, but even then not all the time. It took me a while to figure out that she probably just doesn’t like the smell of their diet.
Was this the first time for the fiancée meeting the family? If he was nervous maybe the dog could sense that.
Or you could just hire a dog whisperer and help him find his inner puppy.
My dog definitely prefers some of my guests to others. There is no correlation to gender, race, age, size or anything else I can determine.
Well, my dog didn’t like my first wife. He taught me to trust pack wisdom (if you’re a dog owner, you’re part of the pack). If your dog doesn’t like someone, trust the dog, they sense and feel things we don’t and convey to the rest of us as best they can.
My friend’s cat was terrified of her fiancee, for no good reason that I can tell. The cat would hide under the table whenever her fiancee was around, sometimes for hours if necessary, and would be sweet and friendly to anyone else.
She gave the cat to me, and it’s never happened again. But I don’t really have a lot of company either, so I have no idea.
I did have a dog once that would become aggressive whenever a male came into the room. Any age, any size, any color, didn’t matter. Sadly, I eventually had to get rid of her because of it. Who knows what animals think?
Maybe the cat wasn’t ready for marriage.
Oh. You mean the friend’s…
Never mind.
Dogs have a very good sense of what’s what. If my back lights flip on because movement tripped the sensor, most times its a skunk or a raccoon. If the dogs start barking next door, I make sure all the deadbolts are on.
I’d trust my Australian Shepherds before I’d trust a lot of people I know.
Do you like your niece’s fiance and feel comfortable around him? I read somewhere that dogs can pick up on subtle signals of dislike for someone from their owners, and react accordingly. I saw that as an explanation of why some dogs seem to be racist- they’re picking up on their owners’ feelings (expressed through subtle body language) toward people of that race.
Does he live with any pets? The dog might be picking up on the smell of his cat or dog and reacting to that. My cat Luna hissed at the pet-sitter the first time she met her, because she could smell other cats on her.
We were having some work done on the house last year and our Border Collie Fergus, normally the friendliest of souls, took exception to one of the joiners. He seemed a nice enough guy, but no matter how much he tried to make friends, Fergus just wasn’t having it. He had no problem with any of the other guys and they could pet him all they wanted. But not this one guy. Maybe it’s because he smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and the others didn’t. I don’t know, but it was really strange.
I went through a stage a while back where dogs just didn’t like me. Before that, it was fine. I could make friends quickly with most dogs. But for a year or two, they just had a bad reaction to me. A handful of dogs barked at me and a couple even snapped at me, and the mellower ones sniffed at me with stiff politeness, then turned their backs on me and wouldn’t have a thing to do with me.
I don’t know if it was a hormonal/scent thing, or whether the first dog that barked at me close-range scared me more than I realized and subsequent dogs picked up on a fear vibe, or if I was, briefly, a bad person.
It’s over, thank goodness, and now I am a friend to doggies everywhere.
Our cat fawns over two of our friends, but is very unfriendly with everyone else. Who knows what’s going on inside that pointy little skull? Not I.
But I’m not a subscriber to the animals-are-keen-judges-of-human-character school.
My mother is highly allergic to cigarettes. So, nobody in my family smoked. If a guest was a smoker, our miniature dachshund found the smell strange and became extremely aggressive.
While man’s best friend has great ears, and an acute sense of smell, he’s an idiot. Chances are that the dog was reacting to a simple sensory cue.
Well, Daisy (our Aussie) is normally a bit reserved with male strangers. She likes women, and most children, but didn’t seem to like the fiancee. We had dinner, and Daisy was eyeing the guy with some suspicion. I like him-he seems to be a very nice guy. I guess I’ll defer to Daisy 
There can be a lot of reasons.
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Someone was nervous. Dogs are extremely attuned to body language. They can sense even a slight tension in humans. The dog may have thought you were afraid of the fiance.
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The guy himself was nervous. Some dogs are deeply distrustful of anyone who appears to be scared and may become aggressive.
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His smell, his hat, his clothes, his glasses . . . My dog one barked at my *husband *when he put on a hat. The item scared her for some reason, not my husband.
I get on with 99% of dogs smimmingly. Occassionally one decides I am the Devil incarnate. Never really worked out why.
My dog is very easy going, and gives nearly anyone the benifit of the doubt. But I’ve figured out two things that will set him off:
-Light blue uniforms. Like the postman wears. Lots of airforce personnel around here, and he goes off when they’re in thier dress blues. He appears to recognize the fact that it is a uniform. I think it is the satin tape trim on the legs.
-Fur on a person. Fur coat, fur collar, Fur trim around the hem, even just the seams on a sheapskin jacket. He seems to have worked out that “no fur=human=friend who will pet me”
My afghan hound liked almost all people, but occassionally he’d run across someone he just didn’t trust. I trusted his instincts.
StG
Was he wearing something weird? My dog barks at anyone who is wearing a hat, or something with a hood. If he sees me when I have my hair wrapped up in a towel after a shower, he growls at me until I take the towel off of my head. Then he’s all, “Oh, my god, I’m glad you’re here. There was some sacry person with something on her head here a second ago!!”.
I don’t think your dog can see light blue. I’ve always heard that dogs have poor color vision. They can see bright primary colors, but pastels are just shades of grey to them. So, the dog would have to be reacting either to the ornamentation (like the stripes you mentioned) or more likely, the manner of the person wearing the uniform.
When you’re at work, you tend to have more of an officious manner. I think everyone does it-- we just don’t realize it. Your dog only sees you in your relaxed I’m-at-home-scratching-my-belly demeanor. Maybe he interprets that professional posture as tension and thinks the person is a threat.
Lots of dogs don’t like postal carriers. I have a theory that it’s because postal carriers ignore the dogs-- they don’t even give them a second glance once they’ve ascertained that the dog is restrained. The dog then gets all indignant. “How dare you ignore my mighty barks? I’ll show you! I’ll bark louder!”
:snerk:thanks for the laugh.
We have two shelter dogs. One is afraid of strange men (sorry to say I think she was abused) And the other is afraid of thunder, which is not uncommon.
With the one that is afraid of men, it goes a LOT easier if the man does not pay any special attention to her, trying to make friends. We just let her bark a little and let her get to know him on her terms. Then they are good buds.