Rolf posted this conversation from Reddit on Gab the other day. It raises all sorts of interesting questions.
Is my dog transphobic??
I (20 mtf) came out as trans in January and started transitioning back in March. My family has a 6 year old border collie that we have had since he was a puppy and ever since I started my transition he has acted more and more strange towards me. In the past he always let me pet him, cuddled with me, got excited when I was around and just generally normal dog stuff, but recently all that has stopped. If I try to pet him now he growls at me and has even barked a few times. When I enter a room that he's in he will get up and leave as if he's actively trying to avoid me all together. He never looks happy to see me anymore. I thought at first maybe he didn't recognize me and just thought I was a stranger (I have longer hair and wear girl clothes and the estrogen is slowly making me very female in appearance). But it continues and he seems to keep getting worse. And he still acts exactly the same as before around my parents and sibling. It's just me that he doesn't like!
Has anyone else experienced anything like this with their pets when they transitioned?? Is it normal or is my dog just a transphobe?? Do you think maybe he can smell the estrogen I'm taking and doesn't like it?
I hadn't previously heard about such complications (?) among the transitioning. Has anyone come across them before? Are they pretty similar among M-to-F or F-to-M transitioners, or are they more specific to one regendering? Has anyone been able to suggest a medical or biological or zoological reason for the situation?
My personal, non-scientific wild-ass guess is that the dog has seen the entire structure of his family turned upside-down because something that was a solid, stable pillar of his existence has been taken away from him, and he doesn't like it at all. It's hard to blame the poor critter.
Peter
24 comments:
The Dog knows you're insane and is trying to protect the family from what it seems as a dangerous maniac.
Dogs don't lie...they know what's up.
"So it's true - animals CAN sense evil." - Ace Ventura
I think it takes a clinical amount of narcissism and willful blindness to reality to decide that the only possible reason the entire natural world, including canines, has to act or not act must be transphobia.
The original poster also does not want to learn the the truth - if he had, he would have asked in a forum full of people who know and understand dog behaviour, who might ask uncomfortable questions about the actions he is performing upon on that poor pooch, and tell him to change his ways.
I suspect the dog notices changes in smell, appearance, and action that put him on edge and make him wonder who this person is.
J
Animals can sense illness. Mental illness.
My cow dogs have always shown a very noticeable aversion to mentally ill individuals, mostly due to their body language being wrong I think, but I can't discount it being a scent thing either. They also almost universally react aggressively to people with meth in their system
The Dog knows you're insane and is trying to protect the family from a dangerous maniac.
x2
Dude has put himself in the dog version of the Uncanny Valley with the hormone changes.
Demonic possession is real. Demonic possession by a spirit of the opposite sex is also real. Pets can sense evil and demonic possession.
I will second Rick's comment about the Uncanny Valley.
Dogs are really sensitive and when the smell doesn't match the visual, they get very confused.
A combination of all of the above: Hormonal changes, mental illness, demonic possession.
And the dog is reacting like the hooman is betraying the dog and the rest of the family.
Dogs know. For video evidence watch the Irish PM's Bernese react to Xiden. The dog goes to all his meetings and is a perfect gentleman. Xiden approached and the dog went apeshit. Dogs know.
Our dog would freak out when my mother's "sundowning" would begin (Alzheimer's). She could spot the mental snap from a mile away. No shock that this insane freak thinks the DOG has the problem. LOL
In his waning years, my father was confined to a care facility on a regimen of heavy anti-fungal drugs. Upon his return home, his faithful terrier mix companion of 16 years completely rejected him. It was weeks before they became friends again. We always suspected dad smelled 'wrong'.
I also agree with Rick T's Uncanny Valley hypothesis. I bet the hormones have altered his smell, voice, and behavior. I don't think the clothes matter.
I can add this following observation: While humans trust their eyes, then ears, then nose, my experience with hamsters shows they are the opposite. In one extreme case, I approached and was seen, made noises it recognized, and when I put my hand out to be smelled, it immediately disappeared and hid. I had just washed dishes and my hands smelled 'wrong'. In another, I was fixing its cage and it came out in a fighting stance (being Territorial), but immediately calmed down once it got close enough to smell me (and then positioned itself to be picked up and fed).
I'll third the observation about the change in personal smell. I've generally always gotten along well with dogs, who mostly are very friendly, and often affectionate to me. But for a period when I was taking a diet supplement, I did notice that dogs did not react well to me - all the way to ears back, nervously backing away, and generally hostile. I can only think that the supplement must have changed something in me, which freaked out dogs.
Border Collies are exceptionally smart. The dog knows insane when it sees/smells it.
Precisely this was my first thought...
Seems to me the OP is too ignorant, or self-absorbed, to recognize that he/she/them/they has a very smart dog.
Aside: When used in the context of politically correct pronouns to refer to one, does that mean "them" and "they" are to be taken as singular? On the other hand, I really don't care. At all.
Since dogs can sense things like early detection of earthquakes and such, I would not be surprised at all to find that they can sense when something is not quite right with their "pack"... the family that they live with. Dogs also have a much more intense sense of smell than we mere humans do, so yeah, the family dog the 'trans' is talking about probably does smell something fishy about the dude.
The totality of the madness of the trans movement can be found in the statement, "Is my dog transphobic?" Because if a dog instinctively reacts a certain way to your bizarre action, it means that the dog is mad, possibly from too much exposure to Tucker Carlson. It cant be because trans sexing runs counter to all natural laws governing all non invertebrate creatures for the past 300 million years. No, its because MAGA is STOO-pid
It seems that dogs are now being trained to alert to people with various cancers, by the changes in body odors, probably. Other serious illnesses are also being looked at for earlier diagnosis from a sniff test. "Bones, where the heck is your Tri-corder?"
Some years ago, I had a remarkable example of how good a dog's nose can work. I went to the other coast to visit my dad, who had a Shepard I hadn't met. A sister took me over to his place. He was in the back yard area with the dog when we pulled in. The dog trotted past him toward us, we assumed to greet my sister, who was halfway there, when she suddenly went to a sprint, blew past my sis to reach me and proceeded to jump and slobber all over me like I was a long lost friend. Dad and sis were stunned, as she was normally a very protective dog when on her homestead. I knew that dad and I had an identical (to my sense of smell) body odor, and the dog confirmed it was close enough for her to accept me as legitimate family without waiting for an introduction from dad.
Wise people say 'Always trust your dogs instincts'. It knows that something is severely wrong.
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