O.k., it wasn’t as dramatic as the title might suggest … we came across a snake again a few nights ago when I was wlking our dog, we live in Tianmu, underneath Yanmingshan and we actually see snakes fairly frequently, some in our garden, some out on the alley etc… On this last occasion, I noticed again how almost non-existent our dog’s reaction to the critter was, he took more or less no notice of it. I think it was a non-poinsonous snake as its head was very round/oval-shaped (usually we get Chinese Habu snakes here as we identified with the help of MJB, they’re quite poisonous and pretty mean …). Is our dog’s reaction normal, if yes, why don’t they react stronger? Because snakes don’t “smell”? Thanks a lot, Xpet.
Good question! Looking forward to some intelligent responses.
I almost stood on a hundred-pacer on a mountain (hill) trail in Muzha. My dogs didn’t ignore it, but just looked interestingly at where it went.
And we have very small snakes that live outside my back yard, and some huge ones,too (I found a skin over 8 feet long in the community garden next to my yard).
It’s my cat I worry about the most, as she is out alone a lot of the time.
A guy near us lost his dog to a snake bite last year. Not sure how it happened, but I know it only took 15 minutes. 
Anyway, thanks for posting this. Let’s see what they say …
a case of superior instincts at work?
With our cat, definitely. When there’s a poisonous snake in the garden, she jumps up on the garden wall and generally keeps her distance, but makes sure she can always see where the snake is going. But, if it’s a non-poisonous snake, she goes and has a bit of fun with it, trying to snatch it up etc… Of course whenever we see this we try to ge her away from the snake anyway, but that’s probably just our poorly developed instincts not being able to distinguish poisonous from non-poisonous snakes … 