03/09/2019
今天我要说说怕狗这件事儿。T House的客人来自不同国家，种族，信仰和职业，可令我惊讶的是，来自非洲的兄弟姐妹，尤其是黑人，总是非常怕我。我想对其中的原因一探究竟。听说在非洲很多地方， 狗依然是打猎的工具，要么就是纯粹的看家犬，没有什么宠物的角色。在南非，我这个品种——德国黑背——是专门用来做警犬的，威慑作用可不小。哎，我们竟然有一位来自尼日利亚的客人怕我怕到每次回家前都打电话给主人问问我在哪儿。主人只好把她安排在了一个自由出入房子而和我不用见面的房间。“从来和狗没有过什么好经历。”她说。我这么可爱，真是冤枉呀！
Staying and working in at T House, I get to see and meet a lot of people, from different countries, races, religions and professions. Of all the groups of people I get in contact with here at T House, I am always surprised by how my fellow Africans, particularly the black ones seem to be intimidated by me, not because I am fierce looking or aggressive, but simply because I am a dog. I have no prejudice over these guests, however I wanted to find out what the root cause of this fear of dogs comes from. From what I heard from one of our hosts, it appears the largest contributing factor to this fear is the fact that in most African societies, we dogs, serve primarily the purpose of security as guard dogs in houses and in some cases, especially in rural Africa, we serve as hunting dogs. As a result of these two primary functions, we are naturally required to be aggressive, so when someone that views me in this light meets me at T House, they are immediately struck by fear as they assume I will be aggressive as my counterparts in their parts of the world are. To make matters worse for me, my particular breed, German Shepherd, is used by the police as assistants in their operations because of our acute sense of smell and ability to listen, and this only asserts the grip of fear on these poor people's minds as police dogs are also known for their aggression towards potential criminals and crooks.At one point, we had a guest staying with us for a week from Nigeria who was so afraid of me that, she had to ask our hosts if they were home before she came in and we had to move her into another room for the sake of making her feel comfortable and welcomed. In her defense, she said that,”...I’ve never had good experiences with dogs before.”
