The puppies in the photo above were dumped in a plastic carrier bag at the RSPCA’s Harnsworth Animal Hospital in North London last month.
The RSPCA vets determined that they were Staffordshire bull terriers and began rearing them as any abandoned newborn whelps.
However, don’t you think these puppies look a little strange?
The coat is a bit long. The muzzles are a bit pointed. I bet all of them have white-tipped tails.
Now unusual for Staffie crosses, I suppose, but the litter looked awfully uniform to be crossbreeds.
Well, as the weeks have progressed, the real identity of these “Staffies” has become apparent.
They aren’t bull-and-terriers after all.
They aren’t any breed of domestic dog at all.
They aren’t even members of the genus Canis.
It turns out that they are red fox kits!
Not very much like young staffies, are they?
The young foxes have been turned over to Fox Project Charity, where they are doing fine.
I don’t know if they can be released or not.
But it’s not the first time fox kits have been mistaken for domestic dogs. Last year I reported on a Chinese man whose Pomeranian was actually an Arctic fox.
And I should point out that is very hard to determine the exact identity of any neonatal puppies. I recently read about a golden retriever breeder who was raising field line dogs in England. She took the dogs to the vet to have their dewclaws removed, but the vet thought the puppies were cockers. So he docked them, too. After all, most goldens in Britain aren’t of that rich color, but it is common among English cockers.
So yes, it is easy to make these mistakes.
But at least no one chopped their tails off!
***
Please note that the British convention is to call juvenile foxes “cubs.”
As a North American, I cannot bring myself to use such nomenclature.
If it is not a big cat or a bear, it can’t have cubs.
Wolves have puppies.
Foxes have kits.
So do all mustelids, including otters and badgers.
Considering dogs tend to grow into their “shapes” facially as they age how in the world did they peg these guys as Staffordshires?
And to explain what I mean, if I can find the words after a few glasses of wine… Especially if they’re mixes, they kind of look the same when they’re born except for coloring. Dogs tend to be born with a roundish head and blunt muzzle, just as these pups were. Good thing they didn’t euthanize them, hmmm??
Whenever I let my dog off the leash I always have this hope/fear/daydream that she’s going to find a pup of some other species and bring it home, and I’d have no idea what it is until it grows up. But knowing her, it would either be a porcupine or just a dog.
They really must spin a wheel for breed ID at shelters and 9/10ths of it must be Pit Bull. LMFAO.
I’m sure this story will get picked up as to the perils of breed ID by untrained shelter staff.
Why do you think I posted it?
duh Christopher.. is it sinking in now?
The shelters pin the oddest looking dogs with all sorts of pedigree names. Apparently it gets the public to identify better with the strange mongrel they are about to adopt.
The sad thing is that they’re not even good with purebreds. An acquaintance of mine lost a Gordon setter once and found it at the shelter labelled as “spaniel x rottweiler.”
That’s a good one!
Rottweiler/spaniel for a Gordon setter?!
The only black and tan breeds are Rotts and Dobies, apparently.
of course! if it’s black/tan it has to be a Rockwelder!
BTW, if you really want to sound like you’re an expert, “Stafford” is the preferred nickname for the SBT
with eyes still closed, the pups clearly have ears already rising to be prick – deeply scooped, pointed tip, cupping forward. NEVER have i seen an entire litter of pitties or pibble-X pups that *all* had both ears prick!
and the coats are plain weird – as is the odd uniformity of color + markings.
the humans may have been surprised as the litter aged + morphed – but i would lay $s to donuts that the foxes were considerably more-surprised by the shelter around them, and the humans handling them! ;–)
glad they got it sorted, in the end – altho it took em long enuf.
(sniff)
– terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*dogs R dogs, wolves R wolves, and primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2008
Unfortunately, all too often the misidentification is NOT caught. Dogs in shelters aren’t properly identified and if lost may not be found by their owners because of it. If adopted, all too often people assume they have “dog A” when it’s really “Dog B”. Shelters seem to think this is unimportant, but occasionally there are health issues involved (BC /collie cross identified as a Belgian gets Ivermect but turns out to have the sensitivity gene). There are also behavior/temperament issues. From training approaches to aptitudes, breeds can and do differ significantly. And of course there are physical issues — people get a “small breed” only to find their “pomeranian cross” now weighs 40 pounds. Or the inverse — finding themselves with a 50 pound “Chihuahua cross” (I am NOT making this up. They had an androplastic dwarfed GSD puppy of 5 months listed as such. ).
I could understand mistaking very young pups — not everyone would spot that the fox cubs weren’t Pomeranian or BC X at 4 weeks or so. But when the misidentification is made for 3-6 month old animals or full adults, there’s really no excuse. “Breeders” are expected to provide accurate data on their animals and would (and are) attacked if the dogs aren’t “show style”, but all too often shelters and rescues are held to no standard at all. The result is often dogs with significant health issues, or wrong size/temperment for what the adopter wanted or people concluding on the basis of their “shelter breedX” what Breed X really is like. At least in this instance the shelter wised up. Unfortunately, some almost equally bad cases go unnoted.
Vr. Peggy Richter
I am entertained when I look through photos of dogs on Petfinder. The breeds that the dogs are assigned are sometimes very amusing. I like to look at the pups/dogs and make my own guesses.
I thought that the above photos of the kits looked like baby ferrets so what do I know!
javascript:openPhotoView(‘16053932′);void(0);
http://tinyurl.com/y8f7b9s
* chocolate Labrador X German Shepherd * ??!
or Liver + Tan Doberman with natural ears (and probably tail, too, altho its impossible to be sure) ?
Leashed,
I would bet that link is an example of salesmanship, not incomptetence. May have saved the dog’s life.
I cruise Petfinder too, and I, too, laugh at the breeds they assign to the unknowns.
I have so many questions. Like, why would they even bother with breed ID on puppies that tiny?
Stupid people!
@ mongoose, your fantasy is exactly what has lead me to this blog! my partner was out shooting and a hunting dog dropped an approxiamately 2 day old pup at his feet. The fearless hunter brought it home….I might mention we are in Australia where the red fox is a pest. I took it to the vet who told me it was most likely a staffie (sound familiar?) possibly belonging to a feral dog since they were out in the middle of nowhere. After looking at a few hundred pics, I am fairly sure it is no staffy. So, we are now harbouring a (very cute) fugitive :)