I had an interesting conversation a few days ago:
Why is that people who keep fish and exotic pets are so open to new scientific knowledge about their animals?
Why is that the innovative ways of keeping these animals quickly gain acceptance among their owners, while in the world of dogs, the bulk of the culture has stagnated around a bunch of tired ideas (particularly dominance behavior models and the closed registry system)?
I think the answer has two parts two.
People have been keeping dogs for longer than we’ve cultivated fields, while fish and exotic pets are often only just a few generations removed from the wild.
The best ways to keep these animals are often in a somewhat experimental state, and it’s not always guaranteed that the ways that those who came before had the best way of caring for them.
Caring for dogs is pretty much cut and dry, or at least, that is how it seems.
But the world of dogs, unlike the world of exotic pets or aquarium fish, is very much caught up in some sort of tradition.
When you buy a breed, you buy into a breed history, which may or may not be true, and you also buy into a culture that pays a lot of homage to those “greats” who came before.
Now, maybe those greats had some insight about the animals at hand, but there often gets to be a sort of cult based upon that great’s ideas– even if what that great happens to believe absolute garbage.
Take German Shepherd dogs and the worship of Lloyd Brackett and his cute incest formula. Brackett was an anti-Semite eugenicist who happened to win a bunch of dog shows, so in the world of show GSD, his ideas are treated as if they were wonderful. Of course, I doubt that very many people in GSD’s share his views that the Jews were a “superior race” because they were inbred, but many people who show GSD’s hold onto that same logic.
Of course, it’s garbage.
But if you follow Brackett, you might win a few dog shows. Never mind that the bulk of the show GSD population is slowly deteriorating into a bunch of ataxic-gaited hyenas.
This never gets questioned, of course, because Brackett leads to success within the culture.
And when you buy a dog breed, you’re buying into a culture. You’re also buying into a brand, and within a brand, there are all sorts romantic ideals about what that brand should be.
It is not just within show dogs that people get caught up in the branding. One of the things I’ve always found amusing about the border collie is a belief that this is a traditional farm dog and that its abilities as a farm dog have been made better through trialling. Except that the original collie-type farm dog was not nearly as strongly-eyed or obsessive as a border collie, and in my part of the world, this sort of “collie” still exists in the form of English shepherds and farm collies, neither of which would ever be able to win a border collie trial in the first place.
A border collie is actually a dog created to manage very large flocks. It was never a dog for small farmers, and what’s more, it exists in its current form largely to win sheepdog trials.
But if you buy into the culture, then you accept that sheepdog trials are “traditional dog work,” when they really are something pretty new in the grand scheme of pastoral dogs.
If a dog person wants to think as an aquarist or exotic pet owner does, then one must be willing to go against the grain.
To accept new ideas is blasphemy in much of the world of dogs.
At some point, you almost have to deny the breed brand and also deny much of the wisdom that came before.
Because science tells us that dogs are organisms. All dog breeds are part of the same species, and special beliefs about dogs– like those that deny heterosis exists within crossbreeds– simply aren’t true. No matter what misrepresentations or jun science studies people come up with, the rules of population genetics still work in the world of dogs.
Further, we don’t now everything there is to know about dog behavior, but it is pretty clear that we were wrong in assuming that dog societies and behavior can be modeled on decades-old and somewhat discredited studies on captive wolf packs.
But if you’ve bought a breed where the people most successful in training it in the past have all adopted some form of what might be called dog abuse axioms, then to question the way the dog is trained is also to blaspheme the breed.
But if we are to do what is truly right by dogs, then we have to be willing to blaspheme.
And if you blaspheme, there are countless numbers of people who will come after you. If your breed exists only as a specialists’ dog, then you might very well be run out of it– just for questioning shibboleths.
The sad thing about the world of dogs is that rationalists and skeptics exist in a very small minority within the various dog subcultures.
To question is to deny.
And to deny is heresy.
We have allowed our relationship with the domestic dog to stagnate.
Modern science has been relegated only toward a celebration of health testing, as if breeding out genetic diseases within increasingly inbred populations is the best way to manage them. As soon as someone who knows better points out that this is not a good long-term solution, it is automatically denounced as animal rights issue or “socialism.”
It’s very sad that so much of the world of dogs resembles a religion, and in the past, I’ve actually called much of the world of dogs a series of ersatz religions.
One of the things that religion often does is it puts mental blocks when understanding is not complete or when accepted truths are contradicted with obvious facts. In the former case, dogma will fill in the gaps, and in the latter case, facts will be denied or dismissed (often in a vast conspiracy theory).
I have had very stupid people post things to my blog and to my Facebook page like “If every time you breed it’s a crap shoot, then shoot the crap you breed.” The “if” in this case is what you have to accept if you allow for a certain amount of genetic diversity in a breed– some dogs aren’t going to be winners or have the preferred conformation or temperament one wants in a breed. But if you inbreed, you will get lots of dogs that look and behave alike. Of course, such animals might be fine or even quite healthy, but if an entire population of a breed gets subject to such consanguinity, then the chances for higher levels of genetic load will be heightened and the chance of a real inbreeding depression is almost certain.
But no one cares about that when you’re winning the prizes.
You will be rewarded for pissing away the genes, and it will be successive generations who will have to deal with the consequences.
And it will continue up and until one of two things happen:
The real animal rights agenda comes to power and pushes upon dog breeders a ton of regulations.
Or there is rationalist revolution in the world of dogs.
My hope is for the latter, but I am not holding my breath.
There just isn’t enough blasphemy.
I’ve been a blasphemer my whole life.
Looks like blasphemy just might be my middle name!
Someone posted a nice kelpie video onto my page. I enjoyed it for the most part. It included an interview with Tony Parsons, who has bred kelpies for over 60 years, and has written four large volumes on working kelpies and is thereby considered by many to be a premier authority on them.
In fact, in the interview, the interVIEWER says that he must be an authority, and Parsons answers “Wellll, if you think someone who wrote some books counts as an authority, then I suppose. I have four volumes out and they go for over $200 in the states.”
I can’t tell if there’s any modesty in the tone or not.
Anyway, about halfway through he explains that the kelpie came from a mix of a few lines of Scottish collie that are now long gone (though I wonder if there are any remnants left at all?), and that it was some amazing, God-given mix that created something incredible, that was never repeated, COULD not ever be repeated, and so he feels charged with watching over that combo.
Towards the end, the video interviewer, apparently a VET, speaks of the breed as sound, with a little HD he’s seen here and there, but by and large a good healthy breed.
Never once mentioning the Cerebellar abiotrophy and cases of epilepsy people have been finding.
I can’t say I have the years of direct experience with the line and sheep herding Tony does. But that’s exactly the fact that will keep a lot of people from ever listening to me or any “blasphemer” who warns that the kelpie is just another dog, and that continued linebreeding would ruin them as well.
Never mind that the breed is not some divine miracle. Just some good luck and an example of what CAN happen if you are open to mixing some races. The original dog was the result of a mix of working strains.
There IS a mention in the video that the dogs of the time were NOT registered breeds as such. But I bet you dollars to doughnuts that this small line will be overshadowed in favor of people convinced that linebreeding is the way to hang onto what they fear losing.
As if any biological creature was ever meant to stay still, biologically, genetically. Genes are in continuous flux. They were meant to change. Animals and plants were meant to change, in increments generally, though occasionally in leaps.
That’s something dog breeders don’t get. They appear closer to the mindset of cloners.
I’m just glad Tony made the point in the video that the dog was made from collies. Even that seems to escape the minds of many kelpie fans I run into on FB and the like. I can’t help thinking some of these folks really do think this dog was some divine creation that was found in a manger magically. Yes, the dog did a lot for their economy, but let’s get our feet back on the ground people.
In the dog training communities with which I am familiar (competitive obedience/agility/rally/tracking/retriever field trials) the “dominance” model,has been out of favor for quite some time. More than forty years ago, Milo Pearsall and others, too many to name here, presented seminars, wrote books, instructed, how to use better methods. Most successful trainers nowadays know the concepts of modern behavior theory ( although they vary in their applications of same).
M.R.S., the trainers themselves in a lot of communities ARE up on the research and better methods, but a lot of actual dog owners I run up against still haven’t heard the news. Old misunderstandings abound.
Could this be because of the continued promotion, self or otherwise of people like Cesar Millan?
I have a subscription to this. Thank you!
Brita
I read you are expanding
I see you are growing. It happens to all of us as we continue to ponder. Keep thinking, as it spreads.
“Never mind that the bulk of the show GSD population is slowly deteriorating into a bunch of ataxic-gaited hyenas.”
This way of highlighting a deformity – Priceless!
“Ataxic-gaited hyenas”,
Is exactly more or less how I describe them too. Being British colonial however I just say “Ataxic hyenas”, we don’t have a “gaited”.
Im a big hyena fan too (especialy the brown) and wouldnt wish this on them for anything. Magnificent secretive animal believed to be a shape shifter by locals. A sangomo (witch doctor) by day hyena by night. Mighty jaws crushing as they go. Usualy the only sign they’v ever been is fresh scat and big paw marks found early in the morning, easily mistaken for lion by excited children.
We all have our superstiions but these don’t affect the animal in this case in fact quite the opposite as it affords a smal measure of protection outside of the torture and insanity that is the use of snares for hunting game.
The freak Show German Shepherd not even as lucky, its such a disaster and plainly plainly shows up what’s wrong in our doggie kingdom . It’s a perfect example of how linebreeding coupled with breeding for extremes can lead to almost complete lack of function. In this case the back legs are the most painfully obvious to almost everyone even people not the slightest versed in pedigree dogs.
I dont care to count anymore the number of these ‘Ataxic gaited hyhenas” I’ve seen stoicaly dragging their hind ends, its too painful I feel uneasy even looking.
Are these puppy mill dogs? Backyard breeder dogs? You bet NOT! I live in one of the most expensive suburbs in Hong Kong, these are imported show stock often ex-winners in the ring from America. They are, were (mostly) imported by tycoons as gaurd dogs. I’ve often pointed out the problems only to be told “but its a champion from the best winning dogs in the world”, “do you know how much that dog is worth???!!!”. Even their philipino dog handlers and trainers look embarrassed by these poor animals as they walk them in shifts of braces of three at a time.
Yes ataxic gaited hyenas in formation. Quite a sight!
Lessons learnt by breeders? Not! But catching on with blogs like these thankfully in the publics mind. Cretainly lessons learnt by owners, I see far more Malinois now. But still the concept of true working strains versus show dogs is a bit slower to catch on in Asia where I live. Where if a dog is an expensive winning import it must be good.
I Keep fish too though (LOL) common goldfish in stunning colours and Zebras. Im interested in these fishy inovations mentioned, any tips, hopefully on husbandry, thats perhapse just a llitte less labour intensive?