[yorkietalkjilly]

Way to go, Boo! He likely sensed fear in that child so he wanted to comfort, guard her, most likely could smell her father’s scent on her & later, when he met the owner of that scent, connected him to that horribly distressed child. Trust a dog to react strongly when he’s made a scent connection! They can be fooled but more likely, like Boo did, they strongly react to smell associations in a heartbeat.

But dogs can associate smells on a person or certain mannerisms with unpleasant things that have happened in their lives totally unrelated to that person that cause them to avoid him/her until they get more information. If they get subsequent good input, they begin to form new, more pleasant associations with that person, as long as that person truly has good intentions toward the dog, wants to effect positive change. But fear, innate weakness toward dogs or animals in a person just cannot be faked and the dog will almost always react to that negatively, until and if the two can work together, with lots of supervision by a good dog handler, to help ease that person’s fears of, past bad experiences with dogs.