Dear Cecil: I recently adopted a black lab puppy. A neighbor who’s studying to be a vet and volunteers at a shelter gave me kudos, as it's known in shelters that black dogs are by far the least popular color and are hard to find homes for. Could racism really extend itself in a cross-species manner?

Cecil Replies: Well, your vet-student pal’s certainly right about one thing: it’s an accepted truth among animal-shelter staff that people just don’t want to take black dogs home. Articles and message-board commentary from shelter workers attest to this sad injustice; pounds across the country (and in some cases dedicated black-dog rescue groups) host special adoption events to try to get the poor creatures out the door.

Guess what, though? All the concern notwithstanding, this phenomenon — known as black dog syndrome — doesn’t seem to actually exist, at least as far as research has been able to demonstrate. And there’s a fair amount of research, BDS having long been a hot topic in the shelter world. Among the more recent findings:

A 2013 analysis of 1,200 dogs and puppies at two no-kill shelters in New York State saw no significant variation in length of availability for adoption (LOA, in the lingo) related to coat color. The study did find that LOA increased about a day per year of age for adult dogs, and that medium-sized dogs could expect to wait longest; adopters gravitated toward the smallest dogs and the biggest, and (understandably) to the puppies.