![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Solved an old puzzle.
May. 18th, 2022 12:55 amI just now realized what I think is the original reason I started being scared of dogs. I'm autistic, I don't like sudden loud noises and never have. Which, a bark is a sudden loud noise. Also, my brain processes barks as being dog shouts, and therefore thinks of a dog's bark as inherently aggressive since human shouts are often aggressive.
I have, over the years, developed a great many other reasons to be scared of dogs (as well as to not like even the ones that don't scare me -- reasons that can best be summed up as "too much like extroverted humans but you can't reason with them, and also they do a lot of disgusting stuff"), but it's interesting to realize the origin of that fear was tiny, autistic child me being terrorized by this sudden, unexpected, aggressive noise from a big animal with sharp teeth; something that became a Core Memory.™
And I came to this realization by finally analyzing why I don't have a problem with wolves, but I do have a problem with dogs: wolves don't bark, at least not much. They're also much more intelligent than dogs, and they're pretty chill as long as you're not threatening them.
With dogs, I constantly have to guess whether their barks are aggressive or not. With wolves, if they're being aggressive it's bloody obvious because they bare their teeth and growl. So yeah... like humans, dogs are a challenge, trying to figure out what they're actually saying. And it seems to me like other people have dogs figured out the same way most other people have other people figured out, and I don't. And given that humans can at least be reasoned with because they at least theoretically understand my language, they're less of a threat than dogs are.
I have, over the years, developed a great many other reasons to be scared of dogs (as well as to not like even the ones that don't scare me -- reasons that can best be summed up as "too much like extroverted humans but you can't reason with them, and also they do a lot of disgusting stuff"), but it's interesting to realize the origin of that fear was tiny, autistic child me being terrorized by this sudden, unexpected, aggressive noise from a big animal with sharp teeth; something that became a Core Memory.™
And I came to this realization by finally analyzing why I don't have a problem with wolves, but I do have a problem with dogs: wolves don't bark, at least not much. They're also much more intelligent than dogs, and they're pretty chill as long as you're not threatening them.
With dogs, I constantly have to guess whether their barks are aggressive or not. With wolves, if they're being aggressive it's bloody obvious because they bare their teeth and growl. So yeah... like humans, dogs are a challenge, trying to figure out what they're actually saying. And it seems to me like other people have dogs figured out the same way most other people have other people figured out, and I don't. And given that humans can at least be reasoned with because they at least theoretically understand my language, they're less of a threat than dogs are.