Animals

I've asked around about that, because it's hard to understand if you're an animal lover. The answers I have gotten consist of:

- bad experience when they were a kid
- never got a chance to enjoy pets
- allergies (sometimes severe)
- had relatives with nasty pets
- they just plain don't like animals
- different religion/cultural background

I have an uncle who hates dogs because when he was growing up, he had to be the man of the house because his dad ran off on his mom. Whenever they had a dog, his brothers and sisters got to enjoy the dogs, but he always had to clean up after them, and never had a chance at enjoying playing with the dog. So now he only associates dogs with cleaning up poop and other messes.

We one time had a team of movers who were Hispanic, and one of them was terrified of our dog, Ginger, despite the fact that she was a gentle, sweet animal. Turns out the poor guy had only ever been around vicious bulldogs (typical for Latino neighborhoods) and had been bitten by one as a child. He had to get rabies shots and suffer the side-effects for weeks afterwards.

Mom and I were staying at hotel run by a Hindu family, and every single last one of them who came into our hotel room to provide a service to us freaked at the sight of Ginger (a husky/shepherd mix), despite her being a gentle dog, and locked up in her kennel. In India and many parts of the Middle-East, dogs are not kept as pets. They mostly just roam the streets as strays, begging for food or eking out a living among the trash. People who follow Islam and Hinduism see dogs as unclean animals. Indians are used to German Shepard dogs that are used as guard animals by people in authority. They're trained from a young age to fear such animals.

I met two different Africans who didn't like guinea pigs, because they thought the animals were "ugly." It's hard to understand if you love guinea pigs and think they're cute.