Black Dog Syndrome

OakleyOriginals / Foter / CC BY

Various journalist are going on about how there is no scientific data about adopting black dogs (in relation to a nice story about black dog pictures).  Clearly they did not bother to Google it at all.

• Brown, W. P., Davidson, J. P., & Zuefle, M. E. (2013). Effects of Phenotypic Characteristics on the Length of Stay of Dogs at Two No Kill Animal Shelters. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 16(1), 2-18.
• Diesel, G., Smith, H., & Pfeiffer, D. U. (2007). Factors affecting time to adoption of dogs re-homed by a charity in the UK. Animal welfare, 16(3), 353-360.
• DeLeeuw, J. L. (2010). Animal shelter dogs: factors predicting adoption versus euthanasia.
•  Goleman, Malgorzata, Leszek Drozd, and P. Czyżowski. "Black dog syndrome in animal shelters." Medycyna Weterynaryjna 70.2 (2014): 122-127.
• Posage, J. M., Bartlett, P. C., & Thomas, D. K. (1998). Determining factors for successful adoption of dogs from an animal shelter. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 213(4), 478-482. 
• Siettou, C., Fraser, I. M., & Fraser, R. W. (2012, April). A retrospective cohort study on investigating factors that influence ‘consumer’choice when adopting a shelter dog. In Unpublished paper presented at the 86th Annual Conference of Agricultural Economics Society, Warwick, UK.

Read together, this research suggest that "black dog syndrome" is a complete myth.  If it occurs at all it is under specific local circumstances possibly linked to breed.

See:  Black Dog Syndrome: A Bad Rap?