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Kiki1256
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18 Nov 2017, 10:24 am

Ok, so this is a really weird problem. I’ve heard that dogs like you when they’re nice. So whenever a dog barks at me, I worry that I’m a bad person. How can I stop worrying about dogs barking?



Embla
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18 Nov 2017, 11:41 am

No worries! Dogs bark for all kind of reasons, and not so often because they're angry.
I have one that's extremely excitable, and she barks and growls at everything. Especially when she's happy. She just gets really excited, and she barks in the same way I start hand-flapping when I'm really excited.
Sometimes her bark is a play-invitation, or to let me know she needs to go out.
It's also in her instinct to bark as soon as someone gets too close to her territory. It doesn't matter who the person is, she's just letting me know that someone is around. Lots of dogs do this. You know the ones standing in someones yard and they start barking as soon as they see/hear you, and don't stop until you've gone away or their owner steps in. Some dogs are signaling to their owners that there's a stranger, and some are trying to scare them away (since people are just passing by, obviously going away while the dog is barking, the dog think they succeed every time.)

So, yeah. Dogs bark for plenty of reasons, and it has nothing to do with you being a bad person or not. Maybe you meet them at the wrong time and place, or maybe they're just really excited to see you.

All dogs can't be good judges of character. If it was true that dogs bark at bad people, and you were a bad person, every single dog would be barking at you.



naturalplastic
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18 Nov 2017, 12:05 pm

WTF?????

So you're walking in a strange neighborhood, and the dogs in the neighborhood all stand their ground in their front yards, and bark at you.

They are all just following their instinct to protect their owner's property from strangers. Its not personal. They do that to everyone. Including the mail man.