Doggo 6th Sense. Does your pup know when someone has bad vibes??

[coloraydo]

My boyfriend and I have a 9 year old extremely friendly and happy golden (Gino) who always wants to meet strangers and get pets. We recently moved into a city and we live a large apartment complex right downtown. There is a large population of homeless people downtown most of them are really nice and just experiencing addiction or a lot of misfortune and for the most part are respectful and mind their business. HOWEVER... some of them are super out of line, harasses anyone walking by, catcall women, scream or sing very loudly, or get in your face. This can all be pretty scary because I am a 5'3, 22 y/o girl.

Anyway... this morning at 9 am I went to take Gino to go outside and a man wearing a life jacket and blowing a whistle (idk who gave this man a whistle but he's always walking around the city blowing it in peoples faces) approached me and followed me to the small dog park across the street from my complex asking what kind of dog I had, I politely told him it was a golden and that my dog had to pee so I couldn't stop to chat. Once my dog found a spot to pee the life jacket man caught up with me and asked to pet my dog and said he loves dogs so I let Gino say hi.

Like I mentioned before Gino is very friendly and always wants to meet everyone so he galloped right over and at first was just acting like himself for about 5-10 seconds. Then, Gino smelled the mans hands and looked up at his face and instantly retreated behind me, whimpered a little bit and tried to pull me away with his tail between his legs. I started walking away and told the life jacket man Gino had to make a number two and kept my distance from him while he continued to ask for money until I got back inside my building.

I have never seen my dog act afraid of anything besides the vacuum cleaner, I have always heard stories of dogs being able to sense whether or not someone was a bad person or sense danger but have never witnessed Gino behave that way before. All morning I haven't been able to shake it, so I guess I just wanted to share this little story and maybe get some feedback from other dog owners or maybe some input about what you think happened.

 

[jysiordia]

@coloraydo YES ! THEY DO!

 

[triston]

@coloraydo Absolutely they do! A dogs sense of smell is so great and intense they can smell odor emitted by the human body through sweat. When people are agitated or their Adrenalin is high dogs smell that. The K9 I used to have could detect we were headed to a call well before we even got in the car. My adrenalin rose and I’d turn around and he’d be sitting by the door waiting.
Listen to you pooch, he knows. He’s a good boy!!

 

[triston]

Also dogs don’t smell one thing as a whole. They smell in layers.. like if your cooking soup he smells the celery, onion, potato, all the ingredients individually. So if he pulled back away from that guy, who knows what he smelled and keyed on. Whatever it was it wasn’t good..smart doggo! Given my history in LE I’d love to know!! And stay away from that guy...

 

[gjames]

@triston My dog smelled that my friend was pregnant before she herself even knew. She would follow my friend around NON stop, constantly putting her nose to my friends crotch and stomach and when my friend would sit down, my dog would always rest her head on her lap and just sniff her and longingly look up at her. It was actually really cute, besides the nose to the crotch lol. About 2 weeks later she started feeling sick, took a test and sure enough, it was positive.

 

[triston]

@gjames That’s amazing! I love that!

 

[xrrbx]

@coloraydo A dog can react on many different factors! They have senses we just don't appreciate. One unique aspect of this is that they can sense (via smell) if a person is nervous or feeling guilty!

You know that feeling when you were 5 and you had your hand in the cookie jar? Your heart was racing, you were nervous as heck and afraid you were going to get caught? That feeling releases chemicals in the air that make you light up like a beacon in the night to many predators including dogs. Like how a shark can sense blood in water. Most predators are tuned into the stress hormones other beings expell.

Sometimes a person has bad intentions and knows they are about to or are planning on doing something bad and they give off those scents. Dogs will react to that. So, in effect they don't know if a person is good or bad, only that the person feels like they are doing something bad. A sociopath wouldn't be caught this way. This is also a reason why a nervous but otherwise good person should be watched around a dog. Not because they are doing anything bad, but because they are signaling that they may be up to no good to the dog! They are also signaling that they are prey. I suspect that a dog can tell the difference between fear of harm and fear of getting caught.

Dogs can also be afraid of people that are weird or outside of the norm. Again, that is in their eyes/nose/ears. Not what with you sense. That is why you want to socialize dogs so they have a wide array of experiences. Then if something new/different comes along it could be dangerous.... Depending on the dog it is most certainly scary.

All that being said... If my dog doesn't like you I don't like you. Even if you can prove you are a good person. Why? Shes my best friend and would literally die to make me happy. Most humans are... unreliable. Even if that wasn't the case, she is my best friend and is with me more then the next 2 closest humans in my life combined. If she didn't get along with somebody it would be to complicated to work around it.

 

[vaptizo]

@coloraydo Yup, if your dog doesn't like someone, you shouldn't either

 

[gnomes]

@vaptizo “He doesn’t like you.

I don’t like you, either.”

 

[gracethroughfaith87]

@coloraydo I've seen it first hand. One of my friends adopted a good sized hound mix (Grace) who is one of the sweetest girls ever. At a party a couple of years ago, Grace was having a good time, getting all kinds of loves from people when Ben walked in. Ben tried to pet Grace and she stood back, hackles up, and growled. Ben persisted, and Grace doubled down. My friend had to put Grace in another room for the duration of the party. Ben is troubled, but usually pretty well behaved. At the time, he was going through a mental health crisis that he hid pretty well from everyone but Grace.

 

[wasanapak]

@coloraydo Not just dogs, a lot of animals can! I have a similar story where I was riding my horse down a dirt road (super common thing to do in my area) with my aunt, and we were passing by a house and something about this house really freaked out our horses. Especially mine. I mean, he didn't buck me off or anything, but you could tell that he smelled something, and he got super nervous, and did not wanna go past this house at all. This was super unusual for this horse because he's usually rock solid calm. I've seen him ride past a giant cottonmouth without batting an eyelash. And you could tell that it was the house that was bothering him because that's what he was focused on the whole time. And as we were trying to get past the house, the wind changed and my aunt (who is a probation/parole officer) went "oh!" And I was like "what is it?" And she said, "it's meth. I can smell it" and sure enough, like a week or two later they busted that house for cooking meth.

 

[ikerepc]

@coloraydo He seems to just dislike children and homeless people. Everyone else terrifies him.

 

[kris8585]

@coloraydo I dont think my dog picks up on bad vibes but the other day when someone was asking me where I lived and lots of personal questions on our walk and I was getting very uncomfortable but didn't know how to escape the situation my dog walked over and sneezed on the guys shoes. I know it was probably just an accident but he completely saved my ass in that moment and the guys face went from kind of creepily looking at me to disgust and I just said "okay bye!" And scooted off really quickly with my dog.

 

[spinny]

@kris8585 What a GOOD DOG you have!

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@coloraydo Oh yes! My dog has been right every. single. time. about sketchy people. It's insane.

 

[bulletproof3]

@coloraydo Yes but I think it's the smell and not sixth sense. Smelling is so underrated, it has more to it than we think.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@coloraydo Growing up, we had a lab/hound mix who liked nearly everyone. However, two different women, both of whom were lovely people, she growled at and her hair stood up on her neck when they came to visit. It turned out both of the were on the same type of medication - some sort of autoimmune transfusions. We think she could smell the medication and she didn't like it. They absolutely can tell if something is "off."

 

[truthisbest1]

@coloraydo My dog didn't like my MIL when she was alive. My husband said it was only because she was the only one My dog knew who smoked. I don't think that was it.

 

[energonwaffles]

@coloraydo Yes 100%. Please get some pepper spray. I know the dude was probably harmless, but you don’t want to be in a situation where your dog lashes out and bites the person. Better to have some pepper spray to protect yourself!