Hi,

I've noticed an interesting thing with my dogs. No, it's not off-topic, lol; if they see a human being who doesn't conform to their notion of *the silhouette* of a human, they bark and become hostile.

An example - my friend's son had one of those plastic terminator robot/gun arms; my dogs would go bananas the moment he put it on, just wearing it. But anyone carrying anything strange that confuses the normal silhouette seems to do it. So I suppose it's inbuilt defensive/fear of the unknown programming.

OK, I know we should know better than dogs, but we don't do we? And it doesn't just happen with wheelchairs, scooters, etc. Anything physically out of the norm will provoke the staring and edging away. Not surprising in an era where people surgically try to make themselves look like a clone of some publicist's idea of "standard beauty" - specially in the US, Brazil too...

But it's not just that, people are tremendously uncaring - as in, they just don't care. Did you see the short video I put in the Humour thread? It's very funny, but the behaviour of that guy is very dreadful. Here, if you missed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWTieYeVtfc

And they're really careless too. I've had to wear an arm sling a few times; in the days when smoking wasn't a capital offense, I'd hold a lighted cigarette in front of my slung arm in crowds. That worked.

Friend of mine, electric wheelchair-bound, used to have a hinged cardboard cutout of himself (full-size, standing, taken before his accident, he is 6ft 3in) attached to the back of the chair, looked like he was pushing himself. That gave them something to stare at, lol!

all the best