Black Dog Syndrome is defined as "the propensity of dark-coated animals to be passed over for adoption [at animal shelters] in favor of their lighter counterparts."
Reasons why the syndrome may exist: the age-old association of light with good and dark with evil; "Black dogs often don't photograph well. Facial features disappear, and animals can appear less expressive"; "black dogs sometimes fade away into the kennel shadows".
And apparently black cats face the same problem as black dogs.
However, there's debate over whether this syndrome is real. Many shelter and rescue leaders insist it's real, but skeptics note that the statistics don't seem to back up this perception. The general manager of the LA Animal Services Department notes: "In the last 12 months... 27% of the 30,046 dogs taken in by his department were predominantly or all black. Of those that were adopted, 28% were predominantly or all black." Link:
LA Times.
Comments
Maybe we need affirmative action for black and brown dogs.
My family doesn't seem to have this prejudice. My brother has two dark-grey cats, my other brother has two black dogs, and right now I have three dark-colored cats and one light-colored cat. Oh, yeah, and my sister-in-law has a black-and-brown dog and a grey-striped cat.
This reminds me though, of a funny opinion piece that was on NPR a while back. The speaker was talking about her frustrating struggle to find animals of color in storybooks to read to her young (African-American) child. Everywhere she looked, there were white cats (Hello Kitty!), white bunnies, white mice, and so on. About the only black storybook animal she came up with was "Walter, the Farting Dog."
What does this say about me?
😏