Out in the animal welfare community, especially adoptions, it is well known that black dogs are among the most overlooked and least adopted animals from kennels. There are a number of pressures that seem to run through the public psyche that make them either less desirable or simply invisible to interested families.
In urban folklore black dogs have something of a strange rap a lot like black cats, except far more sinister. We only need look as far as Arthur Conan Doyle who resurrected the Irish pucca dog for The Hound of the Baskervilles, which also seems to play off even older legends. This suggests that there may be a permeating fear in the public psyche about large black dogs that most people are unaware of.
In fact, legends about ghost black dogs literally pepper the countryside from England all the way to the good ole USA. Entire tapestries of both fiction and amazing superstition surround them. [1]
Sometimes people just have bad notions about the color black, which they then apply to the black dog themselves. As if dark fur by some notion carries with them depression, or darkness, or some other malady. Really, the color of a dogs fur doesn’t affect their overall aggression, agreeability, or other personality traits as much as does their breed and general treatment.
This phenomena is known as “Black Dog Syndrome” and it literally afflicts hundreds of thousands of animals a year.
As people in the community of animal lovers we can work to change the perceptions of our friends and family about adopting such noble animals if and when they’re looking for pets to fill out their families. We can educate the public by speaking about how black dogs suffer under this strange stigma and it’s really not by a fault of their own.
Fiction, folklore, and the romanticism in our culture about black dogs certainly make for interesting storytelling but it’s important not to let it cast a pall over an entire group of dogs. Who, tails wagging with excitement, often as not rush to the door to see their family come home—and others wait, bating their own breath, at shelters for someone to take them home.
I had no idea that black dogs got adopted less often, or that there’s actually a name for the phenomenon!
Yeah, it’s kinda dreadful I know
And what’s really sad to me is that there is a rich folklore about black dogs — although some of it horrible — there’s a certain amount of subversion happening in popular culture. Like fetches appearing as hulking black dogs, foretelling untimely death showing up in Harry Potter. But the dog turns out to be something far less sinister.
A lot of black dogs end up with the same sort of stereotype applied. We all know that dogs are loyal, loving companions, but public perception still causes some issues in this department. However subconscious they may be.
[...] some of the controversy in the animal welfare head space about dark colored animals. While we have reported about it here on PETS 911 it is not fully accepted across the board; yet it seems to be prevalent enough to merit both [...]