Can my dog sense dislike and bark at specific people?

Dogs have a whole complex body language system. They also have a series of vocalizations. Barking can be due to many causes and can indicate excitement, aggression or even fear. I recommend to read and learn about canine body language so that you can recognize what the rest of the body is telling you. Best of luck and please feel free to post any additional questions.

This isn’t a super common problem, but I have met a few dogs who do this. It can be an attention getting behavior (he doesn’t want the people he loves to stop interacting with him). Or, it can be a little bit of separation anxiety, especially if it seems worse with the people he is closest to. Redirecting him to an appropriate behavior can be helpful. Such as asking him to sit and giving him lots of treats before someone heads out door and then continuing while they leave may help brake this habit.

You really don't want him barking at anyone who comes by, because he may become a nuisance barker. He really only should bark at someone he senses to be a potential danger, and he seems to be doing that already!

Dogs may bark for a variety of reasons, but in most cases the reason is quite simple: your dog is demanding you to do something (i.e. feed him). This seemingly pushy behavior is generally known as "demand barking" or "nuisance barking," and it's pretty common. After all, barking is one of the main ways dogs have to communicate with us, so expect your canine companion to bark at you from time to time if he's not getting his way!

It may be that something startled Amy that she was not used to. Did the person have glasses? A hat? a big scarf? All of these things may be scary to dogs if they are not used to them. If the behavior happens again, having that person gently toss treats to Amy until she feels more comfortable may help her associate that person with a positive, rather than a scary experience.

Barking is a hard behavior to break as it can be reinforced by seemingly random things (such as your neighbor walking back into the house, thus your dog thinks the barking lead to them leaving). You may need to either train no barking at all, or deal with barking at everything as it may be hard for your dogs to differentiate "neighbor walking past" and "stranger". You can try to use distraction techniques such as tossing a toy or performing other tricks such as sit for treats to break the barking and distract them from the behavior. If you are not home, preventing the dogs from seeing outside will also help stop reinforcement when you are not home to deter it.

There are certainly some people who feel dogs are more sensitive to supernatural entities. We have no scientific evidence of this, so I cannot speak to this possibility. A scientific explanation would be that your dog has an incredible sense of smell and there could be a smell in that area that your dog detects and reacts to, but you cannot smell because you don't have the incredible sense of smell that your dog possesses.