True story. Was on a flight from Dubai to Toronto and had a stopover in Riyadh, the capital of Saudia Arabia. Across from us in the waiting area were 2 girls and one had a Canadian flag on her backpack.  Two Saudi airport police (both sporting machine guns) came over to the girls, one pointed at the Canadian flag and said ‘What is THAT?’. While one girl said it was a Canadian flag, one guard said ‘No, it was the symbol for the American dog’. I have heard of this labeling several times before. So you see however Canadians perceive themselves, they are certainly not viewed the same way by other countries, and this one was supposed to be some distant American ally (!).