i think this should go here anyway....

well wev all heard stories about animals befriending humans for almost no reason at all but iv had a less tragic story...

when i was younger, my dad had a german shepard (alsation) and as i was in my cot he would always stay round me an if my mum and dad tried to pick me up, he used to growl...
and every animal iv met somhow would obey me rather than its owner (i got told off for this lol) i have no idea why but its strange right!!!

No not really strange, i have had this happen myself. I think they sense things, or just know things that humans don't. Maybe our minds are more wired to "figure things out", but i think their minds have some kind of natural "shortcut" to some things, like knowing who is friend or foe. Maybe the simpler mind is just, superior in ways we don't understand because we are too complex in thinking.

I think animals can tell if you are going to be hostile towards them, alteast my dogs can.

I to create strong bonds with animals, particularly dogs. My buddy had a rottweiler that would protect me from him for some reason. I had a springer lab mix, and a chesapeake bay retriever of my own, they were so easy to train. They would do basically anything I asked them to do without me having to raise my voice or be stern with them, and I usually never had to ask twice.When I did ask them to do something I always asked them as if they were my children, and they would do it. It was very strange but cool, it was like they understood english. They could distinguish there toys by shape,color, and name(red kong,ball,bone,blue bone, and rope).Didn't take me long to teach them that at all, and it was a breeze...



PEACE!!!

ive got 2 american bulldogs they are ment to be stuburn dogs and they are with any1 except me

and for some reasson my young cusin shes only 5 and they treat her so well they will carry her on there backs and protect her from people all the time its mad because they dont see her that much but there allways like that with her

could it be "animals like some people and not others" through sencing feelings of those around them????

My dog when i was younger used to protect me. He would let me ride on his back. I used to fall asleep on him. When me and my mom would go walking, if a person we didnt kno was gonna walk past us, he would us move over next to me so he could protect me.

I think dogs just sense who is more dog loving. Maybe they can "feel" the hostile feelings or negative feelings of other people towards dogs.

I had an ex-girlfriend who used to call me "Dr. Doolittle" because random animals - both wild and domesticated - would get drawn to me. Birds, rabbits, squirrels, dogs, cats etc. Even the most ornery of pets would somehow like me and be nice to me. I'm not sure what it is. I wonder if it's just an instinct that I am not a threat. It's very cool, but can get annoying sometimes (try a romantic stroll by a lake when you're being followed by a flock of geese).

I'm afraid of horses (being up close to them makes me edgy), and they seem to sense that and will act up when I'm around. That's the only animal I don't have a bond with.
And there was one wolf that someone had as a pet that just wouldn't stop staring at me. If you've ever been stared down by a wolf with no barrier between you, it's not a great experience.

I heard a caller on C2C before talking about a strange connection with dogs and wolves, he said that wolves in the wild would just come up to him and let him pet them.
I think he even said he went and lived in the wild for some time and just felt a deep connection to these animals.
I don't know how much to believe of what he said but it sounds a lot like what you are saying OP but possibly on a lesser scale.

I myself am an animal lover I grew up in a home that always had at least 5 dogs and 3 cats, also two pot bellie pigs quite a few hamsters and an iguana.
I now have 4 dogs and some cats I wont name how many because I do not want to be judged haha but yes I can probably take the part of the 23 year old crazy cat lady.

Anyway my three cats that I raised that are just mine and not my mothers I am deeply connected to I raised them by hand they were about a week old when their mother abandoned them on my front step.
So I am very very close to these cats they are my heart actually and they are very emotionally intelligent they know when I am sad they comfort me when I cry, when I come into the room they jump onto my lap and give me a kiss when I sleep they are always sleeping right on top of me, they are very jealous little beings and do not like someone sharing my bed with me or anything being in my lap like my computer or a book and they will chew or just simply lay right on top of it to get my attention away from it.

This is a strange little story and I know will sound crazy haha anyway like I've said before I have health problems about a year ago I had to get something called a full thickness muscle flap done to my foot, and while my foot was hurt for some reason they always insisted on sleeping on my foot but once it was healed they went back to their normal ways, then a few months ago my one cat kept laying on my head , he'd jump up while I was laying there and literally would lay on the top of my head I'd push him off he'd come right back and it was really annoying because at the time I had been experincing bad headaches and eye pain/cranial pain so my sympthoms began to increase and I found out there's a malformation in my brain, then recently I read a story about a man who had a brain tumor or something along those lines and when he got it his cat had began sleeping on his head.
It's probably just a coincidence but possibly they are deeply more connected to their senses then we could ever imagine animals and some humans CAN smell cancer so possibly they can sense other illness as well and maybe instead of sensing emotion in an intelligent way maybe they sense it literally with their sense of sight,smell, taste and if this is so maybe some people have a smell or something about them that is more appealing or less threatening to animals?

I am grasping at straws, I know but I feel animals do not get the credit, respect and love they fully deserve.

cool!! thanks every1... bet we still hav alot to learn from animals!!

That's really really weird, when I was a kid I had a German Shepard too.
And he would growl at my parents too if they did something she didn't like.

I think, it's because Gshepards are very protective.
They are very intelligent dogs.

I miss that dog.

I've had moments where I thought I might have an abnormal connection with animals.

For instance this pitbull that my uncle owns, would try to bite everyone, even my uncle, but would never even bark at me.

But, I doubt it's anything abnormal, it's just animals trust me I guess.

My pit bull Duncan and I were very closely bonded. most days, unless there was another dog, he and I were offleash running. i never trained him, we just bonded and that was that. In town, he never pulled on his leash, sat at the traffic light waiting for the crosswalk to be safe.

He would let my oldest girl sleep on him while she watched TV, and growled if you tried to move her while she was sleeping. He also helped her learn to walk, and would often walk with her holding his collar in my grandmother flower garden.

He was one in a million. Smart guy. Died in his sleep. We knew each other inside and out, and in a lot of ways, he was smarter than i was. He knew not to listen to my exwife when we were dating, although almost everyone in my family could tell him to do something and he'd do it, even the cousins.

my pts do not like me but others espeacily wild but mostly domestic dogs

you are not special, all that is going on is animals adapting to their surroundings and sensing you are not a threat. its either the way you smell, sound, move, or act that alerts them to your presence. some people come across as a threat, others do not. not much more to it than that.

Originally posted by shadowwolf0
could it be "animals like some people and not others" through sencing feelings of those around them????

Ever been in a situation with friends where one friend dislikes another and your the only one that notices the subtle signs, awkward. Id say its very similar.

I think people greatly under estimate animals abilities to read another animals (human included) body language. I have 9 cats currently and have owned cats my entire life to the point where I see them as basically siblings, my current 9 think of me as their mother, watching them and their hierarchy between the family and themselves and strange cats its plane to me that each is a unique mind that churns as complexly as my own.

Of our 3 males 1 is boss, he's the one Ive bonded the most with and he knows what this can get him, he even attempts to break up fights between the others, he even latter beats up the cat that instigated the original fight.

We've had 2 strange cats milling around the property the last few weeks, both act timid when I see them but 2 of our males (the boss male and the cool calm ginger male) ignore one of them, while the 3rd male absolutely goes ballistic at the sight of it. The other strange cat elicits virtually no response from any of our cats even the males sit near it and just watch it. The thing is why?... why does one strange cat make the others go hostile, while another just as strange cat doesnt. Of course its body language for the most part but still i think there's something deeper. Often when my boss cat even just walks past one of the others and just turns his head, sometimes the other cat will not react then some other time that same cat will hiss and slink off. The boss cat has no visible body language difference but each time its able to get a different response. I often marvel at how they can read each other when to the human eye theirs nothing their to read.

Its the same with humans, some people you instantly click with, others you know immediately you arent gonna get along with. With animals this is even stronger since as humans we often fall back onto language to gauge our instincts and we also have mental restraint to keep your dislikes of other people in check.

Animals are no better or no lesser to humans when it comes to social aspects, and yep they can read if your friend or foe real good... Unfortunately some animals just wont like you ever. Animal personalities are as varied as our own, its not really a sense its just since we cant read them like other humans we attribute it to some other strange unseen aspect.

The main reason i posted is theres to many dog anecdotes so far but like everyone else in here I to feel connected to animals (in that I prefer em to the irrational violent nutter hairless monkeys we call humanity). I just wish more animals felt connected to me.

...Maybe you're secretly part-animal?