TexasCHLforum.com

Jumping Frog wrote:

Scott in Houston wrote:. . .The study went on to say that the dog was not reading the visitor first... he was reading the homeowner, his master. He was picking up on the 'spidey sense' that the homeowner has, but ignores or squelches. Even when we brush off the feelings, the dog picks up on them.
. . . Our dogs listen to our gut better than we do according to this study.

I completely agree with your scenario.

I grew up with a mother-son German Shepherd pair in our home. There were also seven children, which also meant there were at least as many neighborhood kids around all the time, in and out of the house, playing football, basketball, "army", and other kid stuff . . . Zoo Central, in other words.

Those German Shepherds were the gentlest and friendliest dogs you could ever want to meet. With the constant parade of kids in and out, door bell ringing, TV blaring, kids playing, they reached the point that they were completely uninterested in who came to the door. They never barked, and they didn't even bother coming to the door.

One day, my mother hears the doorbell. The dogs are in the back screen porch taking a nap two rooms away from the front door. She answers the door and it was a man selling fish door-to-door. She is looking through the screen door at the fish, and then decides she doesn't want any. She is completely relaxed through all of this.

Suddenly, she just had this sense -- this knowing -- that the man was going to come though the front screen door and attack her. She went from relaxed to very frightened in about a millisecond. From out of nowhere, and without any warning, both dogs were at the front screen door snarling and barking and showing their teeth, and jumping against the door trying to break through it.

It is the only time either dog ever barked or showed it's teeth to a human. They knew.