I'm guessing it must be racism.

Excerpt

When Aaron Jones walks Gozer, his Rottweiler-hound mix, people cross the street to avoid them. Mothers scoop up their children. A lost motorist once rolled up the windows and drove off after spotting the dog. One woman screamed.

"He's the nicest dog I know," said Jones, 33, of Oakland, Calif. "It's hard to understand all the fear."

Gozer isn't aggressive and doesn't look mean or bark, Jones insists _ people are afraid of the dog purely because it's big and black. As a puppy, Gozer was passed over for at least a month before Jones took him home.

According to animal shelter officials, big, black dogs like Gozer have more trouble finding a happy home than do other dogs. Some shelters even have a name for it: "Big black dog syndrome."

Nobody tracks the problem nationally, and local shelters often keep only limited data on the sizes, breeds and colors of the dogs that are adopted or put down, according to the Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

"But anecdotally," said Stephen Musso, executive vice president of the ASPCA, "that's what we hear from shelter after shelter: Big, black dogs just don't get adopted."

I wonder how Obama's grandmother felt about those dogs.

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