Superstitions About Man's Best Friend?

Here where I live when you hear dogs howling it's because they hear the fire trucks police sirens and ambulances sirens. Those sirens seem to hurt their ears. Sometimes the dogs in the neighborhood bark because of the squirrels and roaming cats.

Well I have had a life time of loving mutsters but have never heard any superstitions about them. A number about cats, you know the usual about them smothering babies if the get onto their chest! Must have been cat haters perpetuating that. I am not at all the superstitious type, but I do know dogs sense and are attuned to an accute perception of things. Like my Coonhound Blue Seamus, he often knows when company is coming an hour or two before they arrive. I think they sense when you are sick or depressed and anything strange that goes on like spirits and such they sense. Namaste - Littleironhorse

Hello Adoniah, Dogs have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I have a friend who confidently believed that one of my dogs was a healer spirit. If she got any kind of minor injury, she would seek out my "Boo" dog to give it a lick. Of course, once I found out what she was up to, I had to put a stop to that. I sure didn't want Boo ingesting any bacteria or 'yuck' from an open sore. Plus, I didn't think it was much help to her healing process either. This isn't so much a superstition as an observation that has perplexed me for years. I have to believe that dogs do have some kind of a spirit. Here's the reason why: we've buried many a four-legged, furry friend over the years. Some of whom we've had to euthanize. Whenever we've left the property with one of the dogs to be euthanized, the rest of the dogs always go bazonkers over their friend leaving. Yet, when we've returned with the dogs body for burial, they have consistently acted like there was no dog at all. It's like they can differentiate between the spirit, or essence of the animal, and the empty shell that is his or her deceased body. I'll confidently chime in to second the notion that dogs are excellent judges of character. I can't say specifically that dogs see spirits. Although, one of my dogs would regularly converse with 'some thing' in the ethos. We used to joke that he was talking with 'blueblobs'. Yet, it was a frequent enough occurrence that I do believe that there was something behind it. I suspect that like people, some dogs are just more finely attuned to the web of subtle energies than others. Great topic, by the way. I'm looking forward to reading more superstitions and observations about canine behaviors. Oh, one other thing: dogs can definitely 'sense' electrical current. I'm not sure if they smell it, or feel it. Though, our dogs always let me know when a lightning storm is on the way, by scratching at the ground. And, they sniff at the 'dog fence' wire that we have around the perimeter of our acreage to see if the power is actually on, or not.

I never heard the one about howling dogs at night, but if it were true we would have had a lifetime of bad luck, as we used to hear packs of coyotes howling in the forested hills that surrounded our home. It was a blood curdling sound, but no bad luck came of it, and in fact since moving there we had quite a bit of good luck, actually. Wow, I though it was cats that could foretell the future. Dogs? I dunno.