It’s actually very deeply rooted in our biology.
Humans find things that somewhat resemble our infants appealing.
The main reason why we find human babies cute is those features we believe are cute– large eyes and brachycephaly– are actually features that cause humans to care for them.
Stephen Jay Gould contended that this is why Disney’s cartoonists drew their characters in such a way. Mickey Mouse looks very cute to us, even though he really doesn’t resemble any kind of known mouse or rat species.
Gould borrowed heavily from Lorenz, who contended that our reaction to figures resembling human babies was so strong that it often has consequences in how we view animals. Camels are seen as aloof and haughty, while in German, the words for rabbit, squirrel, and robin (European robin, which is quite cute) all automatically have the diminutive suffix chen in their names.
Now, this is a very interesting way of looking at human behavior in regard to art, but it’s much more disconcerting when one looks at how it has affected dog breeding.
Gould supplies this depiction to make his point:
In the third row, you see two dogs. One of which could be an English toy spaniel, and the other could be a smooth-coated saluki.
Humans tend to find dogs like the one on the left more appealing, which may be one reason virtually all domestic dogs have shorter muzzles in proportion to their skulls than wolves do. Sighthounds and anomalies like bull terriers are notable exceptions.
Now, there are many different postulates about why dogs tend to have shorter muzzles than wolves, but the one that seems to be driving the extreme brachycephaly we see in modern breeds is the same one that makes us love Mickey Mouse.
I’m not immune to this appeal. I find French bulldogs and Boston terriers unbelievably cute. I think it may be that having been around a much more naturally looking bulldog type (a boxer/golden retriever cross) that I happened to have known from the time she was a tiny puppy, I find dogs that remind me of her as a puppy bring back happy memories.
So it’s both my biology and my history of associations that make me find this sort of dog cute.
Now, the problem is that dog DNA is actually a very malleable medium.
Dog breeders are actually skilled sculptors who do nothing be mold DNA, and the elasticity in dog phenotype is unbelievable.
We’ve been able to breed so many unusual features into dogs so rapidly that we’ve not had time to take stock of what we’ve been doing.
That’s one reason why we have so many dogs with such extreme brachycephaly that they cannot breathe, cool, or clean themselves properly.
And it’s also why it’s almost impossible to have a rational conversation with a breeder of a bulldog about the many problems this breed has.
The dogs are just too cute to be changed.
We’re fighting human biology run amok on dogs.
Good explanation, Retrieverman, I agree entirely and plead guilty to having agreed to my wife getting her baby substitute shih tzus, combining as they do their brachycephaly with achondroplasia. Luckily hers seem to have just enough nose and sufficiently clear airways to function well on their long daily walks – except, I must admit, in very hot weather. Again luckily, in that respect, we don’t get much of that around here. Paradoxically, they also seem to be, on average, among the healthier and longer lived breeds of dog, playful and not boring well beyond adulthood.
Interesting and I agree, it helps to explain why I don’t infact find bulldog’s, Pugs etc cute, I don’t find human babies cute. In my case I believe my lack of the appropriate biological reaction is a combination of personality traits and rather bad eyesight Lol.
I’d like to take this chance to state that I think Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most intelligent men who ever lived. He could explain complicated natural history topics in such plain language we could all understand what he was saying. His death was a great loss to all mankind; and especially to a nature junkie like me.
I wholeheartedly agree with his hypothesis, and I’m not completely immune to the genetic predisposition to see “cuteness” in all creatures with round heads and pushed in faces, but when I see a bracycephalic dog that can’t breathe or clean its own butt I just feel sad. I have a professional acquaintance who raises French bulldogs. She’s a wonderful person who would never do anything to harm an animal, and when I see her female dog, and am shown her latest litter of puppies I just make the normal platitudes of “Oh, aren’t they cute”, etc., and never bother to explain to her what terrible genetic things humans have done to this breed of dogs. And she’s completely ignorant to the fact that she’s perpetuating a sideshow freak.
DAC
While I can’t say of myself that I find human babies cute, I do think puppies are of course adorable. When Anna was about 9 weeks old, I wished she’d stay like that forever. A combination of that cute puppy face, the clumsiness and the playfulness. But why, WHY, do people find English bulldogs cute? They look like mutants to me. Who actually thinks it’s cute then brachycephalic dogs can’t breathe and snort like they are about to suffocate? I definitely prefer at least SOME muzzle. See this puppy? http://imgc.classistatic.com/cps/poc/130303/410r1/48744ed_27.jpeg
I don’t actually find babies cute except in an intellectual kind of way when it’s the child of a close friend, “Oh, you’re ______’s kid, I love you because of that even though right now you just sort of look like an unfired piece of half-molded clay”. So perhaps that’s why I’ve never been attracted to brachycephalic dogs or cats. I have plenty of brachy clients I adore, but it’s their personalities & not their faces I’m attracted to. Of all the drawings in the example above, I consistently prefer the ones on the right, lol. I loooooved my Borzoi’s looooong banana nose. He looked like me. ;-)
This common tendency of preference for the babyish and “cute” and “pretty” has wrought huge changes even in such breeds as spaniels and retrievers, selecting for short muzzles, round chubby bodies, shorter limbs, big round eyes, soft fluffy coats. The “American” Cocker Spaniel, for one, is a travesty of what the breed was intended to be. Even in Newfoundlands and St Bernards the highdomed heads and very short muzzles have altered the breed.
In sighthounds the emphasis on elegance has pushed the other way: very, very long legs, over-angulated rears, extra deep narrow slab-sided chests, very long pinheads with no backskull and lacking underjaw.
A quibble with Scottie’ post title: ‘evolution’ is the wrong word. Pubmed has many very entertaining studies on brachycephalic dogs, including the link between gastro disorders and brachycephaly. The ‘evolution’ of such animals is…unlikely.
Evolution through artificial selection.
There is also evolution through natural selection, the one everyone knows about.
Quite so. People so often tend to prefer/select towards extremes, rather than appreciating what is truly functional, unexaggerated, efficient for purpose. Sigh.
My Alaskan wolfhounds (the Alaskan malamute – Irish wolfhound crosses), and even my pure Irish wolfhounds are much closer to the normal wolf build than are most breeds of dogs.
A long-legged, racy coursing hound is not too much of an exaggeration over what “nature” developed through survival of the fittest. Wolves, coyotes and foxes often looked shorter legged than they actually are because of their thick coats of fur.
DAC
“A long-legged, racy coursing hound is not too much of an exaggeration over what “nature” developed through survival of the fittest. Wolves, coyotes and foxes often looked shorter legged than they actually are because of their thick coats of fur.”
This is actually true in livestock guardian breeds, too. They look big & massively heavy, but while they are densely boned, they aren’t supposed to have huge wide bulldog chests & they are very light on their feet & fast (although not sighthound fast). Underneath all that coat & loose skin (the protective armor) is a leggy, flexible critter. Good LGDs tend to run 80-110 pounds for bitches & 110-130 pounds for dogs, with a few larger ones here & there.
My Tibetan Mastiff follows that to a tee. He can run, jump, turn and stop with a speed and grace that many dogs smaller and lighter boned can’t match. The thick winter coat even in my house pet of a TM is very deceptive. It’s quite amusing in spring when he loses his undercoat and people who know us in passing ask me if he’s okay because he’s lost weight. He’s also ridiculously flexible and sleeps in the most painful looking contorted positions that no normal dog has any business getting into without being broken.
And healthy, don’t forget healthy.
Indeed, sometimes is really hard to understand the selection criteria of the people in those breeds with such extreme body conformation specially with the known health issues associated with it. Even within my preferred breed, the German Shepherd, I don’t get what were/are some people thinking. One would think that a general-purpose dog as the GSD would not deviate, or at least not as much as it has, from the generic wolf body shape, and in the begining they didn’t. Not even the performance/working lines have been exempt from this change although, fortunately, not in the same degree as the beauty lines.
I was out with the TM today and we passed 2 GSDs with different people. A beautiful female Rin Tin Tin lookalike in structure. She wasn’t in the least exaggerated and had impeccable manners. Though GSDs are not my bag aesthetically, she was beautiful even to my eye. The other, my nightmare dog to bump into when out with the TM. A noisy, lunging, unpredictable male with a dick of an owner who’s had about 4 dogs exactly the same over the last decade. Even it’s coat is exaggerated as it’s the longest, wooliest of longcoats I’ve ever seen. It’s long in the body, short on the leg with exaggerated angulation, hyena topline, very narrow front, slab sided and a massive head. As he walks it on a short lead due to it lunging, it’s so deformed it looks like if he let go of the lead the dog’s front end would collapse like it’s back end already has because it’s joints are all too loose. They didn’t look like the same breed and I just can’t see the beauty in such a strange looking animal. They are as bad as a bulldog in their own way and the conformation GSDs worldwide look like a competition of how many ways can you ruin a nicely balanced canine body shape.
When I was growing up German shepherds were considered the kings of the purebred dog world. A good German shepherd just couldn’t be beat. I grew up worshiping Rin Tin Tin, and loved the breed, and owned two outstanding examples.
Now the GSD is a sad joke as far as I’m concerned. It’s a shame that breeders have destroyed such a fine breed. If a wild canid crossed the road in front of my truck and moved like the majority GSDs do today, with its hindquarters sunk low on legs barely able to support its weight, I would think that animal had somehow been crippled. Man cannot improve upon the basic pattern nature has produced in canids over millions of years. If the ruined hindquarters of most GSDs gave them some superior physical abilities wolves would all look like that. But they don’t. They stand up on their legs like nature intended. The dog shown in my Gravatar (or whatever those little photos are called) is Grizzly, one of my ‘Alaskan wolfhounds’, a cross between an Alaskan malamute and an Irish wolfhound. Grizzly stands up on his legs like a dog should. He weighs 120 lbs. (small in my pack), yet is (much) faster than any of the many smaller, lighter dogs he’s played with (and he laughingly outruns my pure Irish wolfhounds). If you look closely at his photo you’ll see a grey squirrel he’d just ran down, caught and killed (and eventually ate) in the snow in front of him.
One day as I was doing my various poultry chores, I walked between two five foot high snow banks that I had created by shoveling a path through a big drift in front of one of my chicken coops. Grizzly was sitting on the snow bank to my left. As I came out of the chicken coop something flashed past in front and above my head from my right. It was Grizzly, but because of his color it looked like a mountain lion was sailing past me. He landed on the snow bank to my left, and trotted off to do whatever he had a mind to do. I looked from the spot where he had left one snow bank to where he had landed on the other and couldn’t believe he’d cleared that distance from a standing start. I went into the garage and got a tape measure and measured the distance and it was 10 feet, 3 inches. I wonder if any GSD today could do that.
In all the years I have been interested in dogs (which is considerable since I seemed to have developed that interest at about two years old) I have never been interested in winning ribbons, but only in raising sound, healthy and intelligent dogs. But though it’s of no interest to me, I can understand why some people would want to show their dogs in competition. What I can’t understand is people blindly destroying a dog’s body out of some misguided sense of superior breeding skills. Yet it’s one thing to see breeders produce brachycephalic French bulldogs and pugs, these dogs were never meant to be more than a silly little lap dogs that someone could love in place of a human baby, but to see a dog of once outstanding physical abilities like the German shepherd allowed (forced?) to deteriorate until it can no longer even move correctly boggles my mind.
DAC
Is there anywhere I can see pics of your dogs? They all sound magnificent.
Anna,
Thank you, I don’t know about magnificent, but they’re good, sound, healthy dogs, and I like them. I think if you click on Grizzly’s picture that is shown with each of my comments (the Gravatar?), and then click on the blue box that says “View Complete Profile” it will take you to my profile with a few pictures of my animals (some of which belong to other people though I bred them).
If that doesn’t work, or you want to see more photos you can email me at wolfrunkennel@gmail.com or dacstoneman@gmail.com (I’m a stone mason), and I’d be happy to send you some photos of my dogs (probably too many).
DAC
The ones of Gravatar look really athletic. They’re not radically different from an Irish wolfhound, but you can see that they are subtly less refined (in a good way). Are they a first cross? Are they all so homogenous in type or do some look more like malamutes?
Yes, they are very athletic. The wolfhound look seems to dominate in my ‘Alaskan wolfhounds’ (I had to call them something). I think the mix makes a good combination, not only does the stout, muscular malamute blend well with the long, lean wolfhound (which are also very muscular in the right dogs), but by crossing these two diverse breeds I’m combining genes that probably haven’t been in the same dog in thousands of years; real genetic diversity.
Grizzly and his litter-mates are a first generation cross, but I assume if I were to cross them back to other malamute – wolfhound crosses you’d start getting throwbacks to the malamute look. I prefer first generation crosses, but I had a litter of ¾ Irish wolfhound, ¼ Alaskan malamutes born about 4 ½ months ago sired by Grizzly. I kept a black brindle male. They all look like nice pure Irish wolfhounds, except they have thicker and softer coats, but I think the softness of coat comes from Boudicca, their Irish wolfhound mother who has a very soft coat rather than the harsher, wiry coat of most IWs. All who have one of these pups love them and claim they are very intelligent.
DAC
I concur. I’d like to see pics too! I would love to find some breeder who still bred remnant GSDs like they used to be; the ones you see in old pics in the Capt Von Stephanitz text once you get past VS’s history of all dogs and finally start getting to the GDSs.
Old Time Farm Shepherd has been dedicated to moving back to the old scotch collie and so on. I’d love to see a movement back to the Old TIme German Shepherd Dog.
The Old Time Farm Shepherd isn’t really about restoring the Rough or Smooth Collie back to their original type in Britain. It’s about restoring back to the historical universial dogs which were once popular in the American frontier as farm-dogs.
It’s a bit of a misnomer to believe that the collies of the American frontier are the same as the collies of Great Britain since the two diverged quite early on in history. In context of the UK, the Border Collie is the Scotch Collie since the breed’s foundation stock was mostly from Scotland and was widely used by Scottish farmers at the time..
Understood. Perhaps it wasn’t the best analogy. I can see the confusion. I was thinking more in terms of function and the good form that followed. Old American frontier dogs were of such function, as were the early GSDs. I wasn’t thinking of using only an exact lineage.
It was a more general picture. My bad. :)
Temple Grandin has spoken of this disconnect of people today from the natural world. One term she used was “the radicalization of inexperience”: that often people simply do not realize, do not know, what is normal and what is departure from the norm. Hencee the acceptance, and the promotion, of such anomalies.
I count the years of my having babies the most special of my life–but I never could stand the look of brachycephalic dogs. They literally make me ill, so the “experts” aren’t always right.
Babies are cute. Babies that looked long nosed wouldn’t look any better to me than flat faced dogs.
I can admit the frenchie is the one brachycephalic dog that tempted me; the bat ears kind of did something for me. But I slapped around on that one and said “Get a grip!”
Interesting how the French Bulldog of America doesn’t say much in reproductive issues about the simple fact that natural births almost never happen. Also frightening is the sheer number of spine malformations. I knew it was an issue but I didn’t know it was as big as the problems the face caused.
Also was suprised at the numbers for “rage” under temperament. I know some will attribute that anecdotally to the rabies vaccine. Ive had people write me privately about how that happened to various dogs they owned right after getting that shot. My jury is out on that one. I don’t entirely dismiss it, nor do I assume that IS the issue. Still, quite a surprise given how this dog is bred to be sweet. I wonder what the “rage” stats are on other breeds.
On the same note, I suppose the reason I find pugs ugly is because I find human babies disgusting and, in fact, inhuman-looking.
I like short-faced dogs, but not no-faced dogs. Even Chins, which I think are the prettiest smush-faces, would be improved with a bit more nose in my opinion.
For you, here’s a Chin making a hilarious face. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3146/3025511803_7bf863a4b9.jpg
It’s when the nose is pushed back further than their chin that I get the heebie geebies.
Unfortunately in some short faced dogs , If the jaw is not undershot ( chin jutting out ) they tend to have their tongues hang out of their mouth as there is not room ( i’ve seen this in a Bullmastiff too)
& my dogs with Syringomyelia seem to have “weak chins “compared to the clear dogs.
When we got our first flat faced dog we thought he was hideous. it was not a natural attraction. But his personality was unbeatable and the look grows on you.
Do you have Cavaliers? They’re the breed known here in the UK for suffering terribly as a breed from syringomelia. They aren’t really that flat faced or undershot compared to many breeds, but their popularity is what has spread that awful condition.
I was exactly the same with shar-pei and couldn’t imagine a breed I’d want less. That was until one chose me and I’ve had at least one in my life for about 20 years now. I can’t imagine not having one. I know what you mean about the little flat faced pooches have the most wonderful personalities. I’ve never met one in the flesh that I’ve not fallen madly in love with. Pugs, Frenchies and particularly Pekingese. Even Bulldogs have great personalities, but I can’t get over their physical shape from the point of owning one. I have been planning on having a Tibetan spaniel at some point though. To me, they are as far as I’d go towards brachycephalic breeds. I love my Tibetan mastiff and his wedge shaped bearlike head – I hope they don’t end up like most other mastiff named breeds in bulk or head shape.
As you know, I agree w/ you on this one Scottie. However, in my case, I think human babies and most brachycephalic dogs look like little wrinkled monkeys, they do nothing for me. My late mum-in-law, who kept a running tally of all her grandchildren and g-grandchildren, could never understand why I was indifferent to the arrival (and photos) of the latest family munchkin. (They all look the same to me.)
Monkeys and chimps especially are the only animals I genuinely don’t like the aesthetics of. They freak me out. I’m the same with babies. “Oh, isn’t he cute – doesn’t he have his mummy’s nose and his daddy’s eyes!” No – he’s a week old and looks exactly like every other damn baby I’ve seen. And he’s not smiling at you either. He can’t focus his eyes yet and he’s smiling because he’s got wind and he’s uncomfortable.
As you can tell, I thought I was immune to this neotony business. That was until Frank, my rescued dwarf lop who wasn’t stopping, suckered me in. Mind you, I think he would have got me if he looked like a wild rabbit as it’s his personality that won me over in a heartbeat. That’s also part of the selection process when humans breed for animals that look like babies. No good looking cute if you’re not gentle, funny and affectionate too.
The Gould essay raises the interesting question of whether the ‘fanciers’ and the ‘show ring’ are really to blame, or whether these are simply responding to some deeper, programmed, human inclination. . . . and the ‘ring’ is just a complex adjunct to the market.
I tend to think the unhealthy distortion of dog breeds is akin to the unhealthy distortion of women’s attire. The show ring is a bit like the cat walk. Stiletto heels (which are at least as preverse as a pug’s baby face) succeed because they flash ankles in a way that men find sexy. The cat walk (or show ring) just assists in the fashion industry’s efforts to sell product (or breeders efforts to give people the pups they think they want).
I agree with what Jen Robinson says about the dog being akin to women’s fashions. I believe the show ring people are primarily to blame for the way the majority of AKC and UK registered dogs look today. These people aren’t striving to maintain dogs that are functional; they are working their asses off to produce the next fashion statement in their little world (we all produce our own little worlds). When I see anorexic models strutting down the cat walk in 10 inch platform shoes or spiked heels wearing garments with three foot wide shoulders that generally look like they came out of some B-rated science fiction movie from the 60s, I realize that the designers of these atrocities are striving to achieve the same thing that breeders of brachycephalic, achondroplastic, hip dysplastic and other physically deformed dogs are; a creation that shocks the general public because of the extreme variation from the norm. The canid examples of Lady GaGa.
Those garments and dogs have little to no place in “my world’ (as I said, we all create our own little worlds around us), or in the worlds of most people I know who actually think such things through.
In the dog world, where the majority of people (seem) to think “cute’ when they see these malformed dogs, I think “sad”. But I have always swum against the current, and have never been taken in by the latest fashion statement, and usually look at things through a lens that first evaluates the true utilitarian value of a subject, be it clothing or a living creature, rather than by any “cuteness” rating. Though I raise a few species of animals (dogs, pigeons, chickens), none have such man-made exaggerations that they couldn’t survive on their own if isolated on some unpopulated island where they could find a food source and naturalize. My pigeons are racing homers, a breed much like their rock dove ancestors, and are as natural as a domestic pigeon can be. My chickens, mostly types of my own creation, can fly like pheasants, hatch and raise their own young, and survive harsh Vermont winters with little to no shelter (one strain, which a friend once named ‘Woods Chickens’, roosts high in the pine tree every night year round). There are no outrageous, helpless hot-house plants amongst any of my birds and animals.
I like my long-legged, long muzzled, intelligent dogs. Dogs that are as natural as a dog can be, yet still be recognized as a dog rather than a wolf. I suppose my attraction to rather large (though still fully functional) dogs can be considered as much of an unnatural attraction as other people’s interest in the dwarves, freaks and rag-mops of the dog world. But at least I’m not hurting my animals. They can run, breed on their own, whelp their own pups, and if faced with the situation, I believe they could even feed themselves by hunting in the natural way.
The big difference between ridiculous garments and a living animal is that when the fashion show is over those outrageous pieces of clothing can be hung on a rack and forgotten (for some reason you never actually see them on women walking down the street), but the deformed dogs are forced to live their entire lives in that condition. When you cut and sew a piece of cloth it’s still just a piece of cloth, but when you genetically mold an animal, that animal is trapped in your creation forever.
So if you want to express yourself in extremes take up painting, become the next Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollack, become the next Top Chef and create a sensational dish of sautéed frog balls, or (like me) write a book that no one will buy, but leave living organisms alone.
DAC
Most of the people who find these dogs “cute” are not in the “dog world.” They are people who choose them as pets. I had to talk a friend out of a Bulldog (they ended up with a Pug, not much better). These are not necessarily stupid or foolish people, but they definitely fail to do their research and pick based on what they think is cute.
Now, if people stopped being willing to pay a high price to purchase and to own these breeds, perhaps at least their popularity would drop somewhat–and if there was enough of an outcry IN the dog world about the brachycephalic breeds and other severe exaggerations, perhaps the combination of a drop in popularity and pressure from the dog world would force some change.
^This. Exactly.
I don’t find very short faced dogs as attractive as normal faced dogs, they also wouldn’t fit my lifestyle.
Re gsd’s. In the UK the show lines don’t seem super popular. Most of the gsd’s I see are either working line or pet line. Lots of the pet lines are bred to be big heavy built square backed dogs (usually long coated). These seem more popular than show lines.
I like working lines but not everyone has the capacity to provide for their needs.
This is my working line bitch learning not to chase sheep http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsGIQm4YmiU
As she is a rescue I don’t know if she is working lines but would assume she is.
This is another gsd I fostered for a while, she may have something else in her, but as you can see athletic and natural looking/moving. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXP5kac18LM
This is my current foster gsd. She is at least 1/2 show lines, lovely dog but not as good moving imo as the other two. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SJUIIZfLMg&list=UUPmhEfCjOu9wbmvrvClk6Zg&index=6
Adam
Adam, the GSD in your first video is a good looking animal; better than most I see over here. The one in the third video definitely shows the hindquarter problem I see all the time. If any of my dogs ever produced a puppy that moved like that they’d never breed again.
Looks like you’re doing a great job with the dogs, it’s good to see someone who actually trains them.
DAC
As opposed to the people that seem to think they are born ready trained. I have a litany of incidents and a vet trip just involving my own dogs and completely mental GSDs in the hands of idiots. It’s a shame as when in the right hands they are fantastic dogs.
The UK GSD people simply cannot understand why the pet buyers prefer a dog with a level back, good strong rear end and coat instead of their banana backed weak hipped show specimens – “which are so much more elegant and in the true German tradition”, as they tell me.
Elizabeth
To add
As a trainer I’m seeing lots of people changing from gsd’d to bsd’d or wolf type dogs. I think this is because of the extreme breeding in gsds.
If you look at the original gsds they were similar to mali’s or the wolf breeds (cech wolfdog ect) in shape.
Adam
Do you think the pet people have caught on yet or is it more the people who work their dogs in some capacity? I’ve not bumped into any variant of a BSD outside a dog show, only met 2 (very convincing) wolf lookalikes, one wolf x gsd hybrid and one northern inuit that looked nothing like a wolf and died young due to being epileptic. Mind you, I’m up North and this is the domain of staffies, patterdales and jack russells.
I’m a strong advocate of the belief that crossbreeding is what is needed to save some of the more structurally unsound breeds of dogs like the GSD. It seems the Malinois is now replacing the German shepherd as the “police dog” of choice when a true working dog is needed. I may be wrong, but when I look at a Malinois, I see sighthound ancestry. About two years ago I bred Boudicca, my female Irish wolfhound to M’Loot, the 150 lb., 5/8 Alaskan malamute, 3/8 wolf I bred for weight-pulling competition. The pups grew into amazingly physically fit animals, with the females weighing around 140 lbs. on a long-legged and rangy, yet very muscular frame. I have lost contact with the owner of the only male of that litter, so can only imagine what he must have grown into. They all came out looking very wolfhound-like, but a number of them looked amazingly like giant Malinois until they grew in a longer adult coat. Looking at these dogs I can easily see how sighthounds could have gone into the ancestry of the Malinois.
I believe that if the GSD is to be saved there will have to be outcrosses to some sort of sturdy sighthound. No doubt the AKC and UK breeders will never do this and lose their “registered purebred dog” standings, so they’ll probably continue on their misguided way, but someone should step forward and concentrate on “recreating” the GSD as the wonderful dogs they once were. This has been attempted before of course, with more or less significant results, but the main problem as I see it is that whenever anyone tackles the task , and they find themselves with a line of good mix-breed dogs, they then want to register them and start breeding to a standard, and have their dogs accepted as a breed, and soon their dogs are sliding down that slippery slope of a closed registry, and are no longer any better than the GSD they were originally bred from (we all know of several “breeds” or “lines” of “shepherds” that fall into that category).
I am very tempted to cross one of my Irish wolfhounds, or even one of my Alaskan malamute-Irish wolfhound crosses to the best GSD I can find (judged by structural soundness, not by the number of champions in its pedigree) just to see what kind of dog I would get. The cross would certainly put the legs back into the resulting shepherd cross puppies, and any “working” dog is only as good as its legs.
DAC
Sighthound could probably improve a lot of dogs in general since on average, they seem to fare better in the joint health department. I’m no expert on BSDs or GSDs – rather an adoring fan who has been reading and learning – but I haven’t yet come across any history on BSDs that suggests sighthound.
Go far back enough though, and I could be wrong.
Of course, when we love and admire a type of dog we want to see it in many places, and phenotype similarities don’t necessarily mean that the same genotype simliarities exist;convergent evolution is a case in point, though I guess that doesn’t exactly fit since dogs are too closely related to fit in that category.
Peggy Richter would be the best person to chime in on this. Haven’t seen her here lately though.
ah, no. If anything, the Irish wolfhound and Scottish deerhound as they exist today (they are both reconstructions of the original ancient landraces) have a dash of Belgian in them, not the other way around. The GSD doesn’t need “saving” by being crossbred to sighthounds. There is plenty of genetic sources in Guide dog lines, herding lines, actual working police /military lines and even the altdeuchers that would be more applicable. The reason for the Malinois replacing the GSD is because the Malinois is a smaller, lighter and faster dog, which is what’s currently wanted in the existing military/police depts. There’s plenty of working GSDs out there. You’ll just never see them in a conformation ring. Yes, a lot of dogs may look like “Belgians” when they are young. Pretty much, the Belgians are a fairly unexaggerated landrace and they “look” like wolves or any other “wolflike” dog. Plenty of people think they are the result of a collie/gsd cross or if fawn, a coyote X. If you want a working crossbred dog, look to KNPV dogs, where the work has already been done. Generally speaking, however, these folk may not care about “purity of breed” but they certainly DO care about pedigree as it relays information regarding the dogs’ working capabilities (most of the working characteristics are genetic, so no, while KNPV crosses, it isn’t done haphazardly).
Would a sighthound/GSD x “look” like a Belgian? It might (I once saw a Rott x Belgian cross of known parents that looked simply like an odd colored Rott. I also saw a Belgian/Australian Shep X – also of known purebred parents — that looked simply like a merle BSD.) Generally, as Leon Whitney DMV showed, crosses tend to “average” in the F1, so a cross would likely not be as “racy” as a sighthound nor as overangulated and long as most GSD (again, plenty that aren’t overangulated). Which is pretty much what a Belgian or any other moderate type looks like. The problem is what temperment and genetic heritage the dog would have. There’s a reason why KNPV doesn’t use a lot of greyhounds or wolfhounds, etc in their crosses.
I’ve had Belgian Sheepdogs since 1980, by the way. So they aren’t an unknown to me.
“Ah, no”…? You seem so sure. And if you think the GSD doesn’t need saving then we have different ideas of what makes a sound dog. People who get deeply involved in purebred dogs seemed to be so convinced their breed stepped out of the primeval forest in its present form and sat at the fires of man. They just don’t want to admit that their dogs, no matter how “true” they breed today, were originally just a combination of types that existed before them.
DAC
yes, I am fairly sure. I have seen plenty of GSDs outside the conformation ring that are sound, capable dogs. As a breed, there’s a fair number of them — I believe enough to avoid COI issues and enough of them that one can breed working line dogs (as some locations do). It isn’t, IMO, necessary to cross breed them to save them. IF one were to cross breed them, the ideal choice would not, IMO, be a sighthound, which pretty much doesn’t have any of the same functions as a working GSD. There’s no particular plus to using a sighthound. There are related dogs (Rotties are actually not that distantly related, and there are plenty of other choices in the European continental breeds). I certainly don’t (and haven’t) ever asserted that GSDs (created by Von Stephanitz) or any of the other dog breeds known today “stepped out of the primeval forest”. Nor am I against changing the closed registry. I think if you look at previous posts I’ve made here and on Borderwars, I have advocated a “merit registry”/ “appendix registry” system. My comment was that, IMO, the GSD doesn’t need saving by use of crossbreeding. There are plenty of GSD (and even “grade or appendix type” GSDs out there to use that don’t have conformation exaggerations. As for Belgians, the breed as a pedigreed animal with a studbook was established in the late 1800s although a landrace of herding dogs similar to the Belgians have been known back about to the 1600s or so. It’s fun to speculate that they are the dogs mentioned in “the Conquest of Gaul” as the dogs of the Belgae, but it’s highly doubtful that those were anything more than the generic “landrace” herding dog common to most of the Germanic tribes then (the Belgae weren’t Gauls. they were a Germanic tribe according to Caesar. Certainly the “Belgic area” wasn’t just modern day Belgium back then). In any case, one would need a skeleton of a dog known to be from that time and free of modern contamination to do any kind of DNA verification one way or the other, and to my knowledge, no such exists.
The problem with your statement is that most of the working lines of German Shepherd Dogs are unregistered. Most of the working Mallinos are unregistered too.
So within context of the FCI, CKC, KC, AKC, NZKC, ANKC and so on, the German Shepherd Dogs are screwed.
“If you want a working crossbred dog, look to KNPV dogs, where the work has already been done. Generally speaking, however, these folk may not care about “purity of breed” but they certainly DO care about pedigree as it relays information regarding the dogs’ working capabilities (most of the working characteristics are genetic, so no, while KNPV crosses, it isn’t done haphazardly).”
I’m not sure I see how Peggy’s statement is a problem. I read her quote above. She states there are resources for dogs that are not of the registries you mention; show registries.
If all we want are healthy, sound, GSDs, what does it matter that they are not registered with the very entities that ruined them? I mean, yes, if they continue, they continue to put bad blood in the world, but if there are enough genetic lines to work from that have nothing to do with those registries, people could turn their backs on the AKC, NZKC and so on, and if enough people did, they would not have the power they do now.
Dogs were bred long before they were registries, and a lot of us here concur that some of the biggest genetic problems with dogs are happening as a result of closed studbooks, poor breeding goals, inbreeding, popular sire syndrome, etc. Most of these things started in the last 100 or so years, right around the advent of shows and show registries.
Not to say that working line breeders don’t fall for the same tactics when they have “winners”, but if the KNPV really does encourage crosses with a good intent, that seems to be a step in the right direction. ALthough I don’t know much about the KNPV. I’m just starting to learn about them. Ultimately they are another entity, not breeders.
You need to look at the bigger picture beyond the United States. Yes, AKC-registered dogs and CKC-registered dogs are the minority in North America, however most of the gene-pools in the western world are registered to an FCI-recognized registry.
Like it or not, most dog owners in the western world have an FCI-registered breed. It is not as simple as just dis-empowering the franchise. The FCI is not just a show registry. Most working breeds, especially hunting breeds, are registered to the FCI as well and many are not shown at all. Problem is that working GSDs and Mallinos are not recognized by FCI. At least not yet. I don’t mean to toot the “too big to fail”, but that is the reality we face today.
That’s why Jess’s projects (DesertWindHounds) like her Afghan back-breedings don’t really make a difference. They do make a difference in context of American dogs, but they don’t make a difference in term of global registries.
Registries outside of FCI is fly-shit on the wall.
When I responded I was referring to all registries you mentioned, even though I live in the USA and so it would be assumed I would be referring to the AKC.
When you say “regsistries outside of FCI is fly shit..”, you continue the mindset that gives them their power. I’m not saying you can change things overnight or even any time soon, but it has to start somewhere.
As I understand it, different countries decide whether breeds have to pass working or temperament tests before registering or breeding of them is condoned, not the FCI. Or am I wrong? If I am right, then having a hunting breed is not the same as a working line version of that breed, and from what you are writing, that perception on my part seems to be correct, as you say “Problem is that working GSDs and Mallinos are not recognized by FCI”
On the other hand, this is also confusing to me. I know from kelpies for example, that show kelpies are called the “Australian Kelpie” and working lines are called “Working kelpies” and those names are officially recognized, and they have their own registries. I did not think this, or any situation even close, exsited for other breeds.
It is not possible for a working GSD to be FCI recognized? How does this work? Does the word “Working” show up in a pedigree? And in countries that do require a certain amount of working ability to be proven before they are registered in their own country’s KC, once registered to that KC, why would they not be recognized?
Because the military and police DO NOT want their dogs to be registered in FCI. They also don’t want pet-buyers to have access to their dogs either.
It is not because they are worried about show-breeders or pet-breeders ruining the breed. A lot of them have their own their own breeding facility which is controlled by the government.
Just out of curiosity, what is the definition of a “Working Dog” accepted by all these different organizations world-wide? Herding dogs that actually herd cattle and sheep must be considered “working dogs”, yet I’m sure police and military units don’t want cattle or sheep dogs, they want tracking/attack dogs (if they just wanted bomb/mine sniffing dogs they’d do just as well with something like beagles), and ranchers don’t want hard biting dogs bred to attack at a moment’s notice. So “Working Dog” cannot be an all-inclusive label. So just what are we all talking about here; Schutzhund, Police and/or military dogs?
And do all the police and military organizations use every puppy they breed? I can’t imagine every dog they raise can pass their stringent tests, so what do they do with their rejects if they don’t want them falling into the hands of “pet-buyers” (i.e. the general public)? I would assume they’d only want to keep and further train the “Cream of the Crop” of the dogs they breed, and that can’t account for more than 5% of their puppies (otherwise they wouldn’t be selecting just the very best. I’m talking about something like the difference between the regular U.S. Army VS. the U.S. Army Special Forces, Green Berets), so what do they do with the other 95%?
DAC
They cull quite heavily.
In this context, “working” dog carries strong connotations of patrol dogs. It does not necessarily exclude narcotics/detection/SAR, but it does imply the dog is used by police or the military.
Shepherds are common for patrol dogs, but field line labradors are arguably more popular for scent work.
In some countries, working dogs are registered to FCI, but they undergo “working dog trials” developed by the military and police. Those who breed working dogs breed for those trials. We don’t have them in North America; but there are clubs dedicated to this in Nordic countries such as the Svenska Brukshundklubben.
More information: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brukshund#Tj.C3.A4nstehundar
So it does depend on the country and the situation then. That’s what I thought. The phrase ” Problem is that working GSDs and Mallinos are not recognized by FCI.” just seems too sweeping, unless despite being a GSD or mal, a military/police dog has an option of being registered in some way like “miscellaneous” instead of under it’s breed name in the FCI.
And going to DAC’s point, I guess that it would be correct to say that by “working dog” you really mean police or military dog? That’s a specific form of work. People rarely think of GSDs or Mals as herders anymore but a few people still do engage in that sort of thing.
My definition of a working dog is one which is used in an occupation where if the dog fails to do the job, then it is unprofitable for the owner to keep it.
However, most breeders’ definition of a working dog is one used in a hobby. There are lots of Border Collies which do herding trials, but there are very few that actually work on a ranch where owning a dog means the difference between putting food on the table and bust.
This is my definition of a working dog as well. My dogs have to guard livestock & protect their families. If puppy buyers want to show or do competitive sports with their dogs, fine, I’m not opposed to it & I’ll certainly help them out. But if their goal is to win Best In Show or top rankings in a sports venue, they’re better off looking elsewhere. If they want a dog to put a hurting on the local coyote or wolf population that has been snacking on their lambs while at the same time letting those lambs cuddle with him, or to give an abusive ex who just got out of prison nightmares while at the same time letting the 8 year use her for a pillow while he plays video games, then yeah, I’ve got a pup for them.
Dave and Anna, your def of working dog, I agree with. My kelpie is a working line kelpie and was bred to work a real sheep farm, no trialing. But for whatever reason he was a dud, and so he came to me. The whole experience introduced me to the concepts of sport vs practical work, and from there, came those that know trial animals from practical work animals, from herding to protection to hunting.
A lot of the trial dogs are more “over the top” than workers as I understand it. Getting even more off topic here, but I have spoken to mal owners on FB groups who use prongs and E collars for training. Some of them say that you need these to train Mals due to their intensity, and I’m in no position to argue for or against as opposed to positive training methods, but while some of these people say Mals are exceptional in the dog world and thereby cannot truly be limited to only positive training methods, and some of THOSE folks say they have worked with dog trained for police and military, I still suspect, or get the impression, that most of these folks are really sport folks.
One FB man said he has been in that kennel on the new show “Alpha Dogs” and he assured me this is a top notch training facility, and that they do use chokers, e collars, etc. On the other hand, there is a police man named Steve White, and he supposedly is emphasizing positives. The “pure positive” trainers cite him when opposing prongs, but to actually look at Steve’s You Tube videos they cite, he is not a positive purist. He just tries to use positives as often as possible and to make sure that when E collars are used, that they are used with the right timing, for the right reasons, etc.
Then there are those who say that the over the top attitude being bred in is unnecessary for a working OR sport dog, and it just seems to be the “thing” or the belief these die hards have, that it’s the only way to get the results you want.
Guess I wandered a bit after discussing the temperament of the mal. But the different experiences and beliefs of people are interesting, to say the least.
I really know little about (the) KNPV, and was unaware that they were actively crossbreeding to create a more physically sound dog. But I’m sure they are also breeding for a dog that will more readily attack and bite at the same time, a dog that may not be the best one for the general public to own. When I was growing up “Bull Terriers” were considered good family dogs, but look at what breeding for a certain temperament has done to the reputation of that type of dog, most commonly referred to today as a “Pit Bull”. There seems to be little problem with the physical soundness of the Pit Bull today, except perhaps some of those short-legged giants that are evolving more and more towards an English bulldog phenotype, it’s the mental stability that’s the problem. So there are many ways a dog breed can be ruined.
If we’re talking attack dogs in our discussions here, I’ll have to admit that’s an area I haven’t been active in, or even interested in, in decades. My comments are always directed at the subject of a good, healthy, intelligent family pet or hiking and outdoor activities companion. I would not suggest any of my wolfhound crosses ever be used for Schutzhund or any other form of attack dog work. I’m just interested in dogs that are healthy, sound and great pets that you can let out in the yard to play with your children, and not worry about them biting the neighbor’s kid because he threw a handful of leaves on his little master (something that actually happened to me when I was about 10 years old with a friend’s GSD). So I’ll bow to the greater knowledge of all of you who work with Shutzhund, KNPV or whatever “attack sport” dogs you work with, and ask you to understand that when I speak of my dogs, or any other dogs, I’m just speaking from the standpoint of producing a good family pet or companion for an outdoor type person. Not dullards that can barely move, and sleep on the couch all day, but at the same time not some hyperactive demon that only keeps itself barely under control at your command, and sits trembling as you talk to a person, just waiting for them to make the wrong move so it can sink its teeth into them (many years ago I routinely rescued “bad” GSDs, some that were considered bona fide “killers”, and retrained and rehomed them to situations where their sometimes badly damaged personalities could best be handled to allow them to lead a happy, productive life, and had many of these over-anxious tremblers).
I agree that if you’re going to breed at all pedigrees are very important, but to many people “pedigree” means “registered dog”. I have a pedigree for every animal I raise, including my chickens and pigeons, any breeder who doesn’t isn’t really much of a breeder. I keep records of the ancestry of even my little free-ranging bantam chickens with as much concern and diligence as any breeder of AKC show champions does their dogs, but with a lot more freedom of decision.
DAC
There’s no reason in the universe one has to stick with AKC registration. Several of the HGH dogs (GSD) owned by Manfred Heine were not registered, but their offspring were accepted. The new rules by FCI would certainly allow such dogs as well as the Altdeuchers. KNPV doesn’t seem to have a problem and FCI does accept KNPV registrations. So again, given the actual NUMBERS of GSDs out there, this isn’t a breed that is dire straits needing crossbreeding to get back to a working type. And the likelhood of accepting THESE dogs is much higher than some wolfhound/GSD cross just done for the sake of breeding a GSD to a sighthound.
Most military and police dogs outside of Scandinavia are unregistered. Only a few KNPV dogs are registered through NKU to FCI. There is not enough outside registration in EU to save the genetical stock. Maybe things will change when other countries adopt the SBK trials.
Do not confuse those stupid IPO dogs with “working dogs”. IPO dogs don’t make good working dogs.
I’d love to hear your explanation of the differences Mal Man! I really would! :)
“The new rules by FCI would certainly allow such dogs as well as the Altdeuchers.”
I would like hear more about these new rules. With the RSV2000 (also FCI), e.g., you can enter unregistered GSDs through their appendix registry. But you also mention the inclusion of the Altdeutscher Hütehunde, which sounds pretty good.
I find gsd’s very intelligent and trainable, but because of this they also learn the wrong thing very quickly. Also unlike some breeds that maybe less receptive to initial training but retain it forever once its stuck gsd’s tend to need a bit more maintenance on behaviors. So they can learn the wrong thing very easily and if that is enforced (e;g attack the other dog, other dog goes away) they retain that!
Re wolfies. I’m in the southwest. I think wolfies are popular down here. I often see cech wolf dog crosses for example. The northern inuit’s day is done as a ”breed” due to in breeding and heath issues so many people are out crossing. It may also be that I see an elevated number of these dogs because I’m a trainer and a lot of my advertising is word of mouth. I have found that people with the same breeds tend to gravitate to each other so that maybe it.
With bsds. Don’t get me wrong still more gsd’d than bsd’s but bsd is increasing. One thing I have noted is show line bsd can be a little nervous ect. The best bsd’s I see are working line mali’s that are bred by security firms. But these dogs can be a bit of a shock to someone who is sued to a soft pet/show line gsd!
This brings me to another point. Breeding dogs for pets doesn’t do them many favors, breeding them for showing doesn’t either, but can the average owner provide for the needs of a working line dog?
The first video (my own dog), I was something like her 6th home at 14 months.
The 2nd one (Mika) was written off as untrainable and impossible with other dogs by previous ”experts” yet it took very little effort to get her doing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3WGB8rRio&list=UUPmhEfCjOu9wbmvrvClk6Zg&index=17
So obviously I don’t have an issue with working line ones and would sooner have a working line than a show (sorry pup), but does this apply to everyone?
That said I have jrt’s and collies too and I don’t think they work well as average pets!
Adam
I first looked at BSDs – groenendaels specifically – through shows, and I concur. Most were some of the most nervous creatures ever. Far from what a good BSD should be. Even the show standard says “fearless”. One breeder told me that their “reluctance” was normal, as they are not supposed to give full attention to strangers. Either the breeder was coming up with excuses for poor temperament or simply could not differentiate aloofness or discernment from insecurity and fear.
Malinois are very sensitive in their own right, show or working, but seem to have been the hand-selected line to bring out of lousy temperament manipulation into a more daring animal. All I ever hear is that for practical purposes, they were chosen because of the short, lower-maintenenance coat.
Pictures of older gronies and tervuren have dogs that have a longer coat than a mal, but still far shorter than the show coats in the longhaired BSD varieties. Probably these would still be too long for police and military to bother with, but it was less profuse and somewhat more practical, perhaps back in the day for herding in certain environments.
Amazing how something as simple as coat length can determine the wider destiny for an entire breed or variety of dogs.
I must admit that I really like the look of the working malinois much more than the show ones. My first dog was a highly trainable collie x golden, but I wouldn’t know what to do with an eager to please dog like that any more. Similarly someone going from any herding breed to the big LGDs would be in for a hell of a culture shock.
I think the working vs pet GSD is part of the old problem of people picking a dog purely on looks rather than what they are bred to do. If you are picking a GSD of any type just because you like the looks and don’t put the work in, or even have the wrong personality for the breed or particular dog, you’re both screwed. The working vs pet/show just adds a to the magnitude of how screwed you are. And sadly, not all of the dogs have someone like you to pick up the pieces.
I’m right with you over the jrt and collies not being the ideal pet for most people. The patterdales are like a jrt on steriods and I’ve never seen one that didn’t look like it was going to off like a bomb at any moment. I think the collies suffer from people thinking they are born obedient too and forget that they are bred to run all day.
We have a vet tech near me with a short coated patterdale. People inadvertently walk up to the guy thinking someone is abusing a dog, because of the clamor the dog makes when the owner puts it on a lead at the local forested park, and has it tree raccoons to keep the dog’s hunting desire stimulated.
An amazing ruckus, the little guy makes. Glad the owner keeps him leashed because it’s a frequented park and even if the dog did not intend to start a fight, his level of energy, in play, might confuse and entice certain dogs to defend themselves briskly, thus piquing things into a fight inadvertently.
Embarrassingly, my shar-pei is exactly the same and she goes into battlecry mode on everything that’s not a dog or a human. What makes it worse is she looks too cute to be chasing anything so I get some filthy looks off complete strangers who didn’t see her trying to dive in the lake after the swans the moment before they came round the corner.
I’m pretty convinced that a patterdale could cause an argument in an empty room if it felt like it. The one across the road from me used to love my shar-pei and they would flirt politely at every opportunity. Then one day he decided he hated the sight of her. I’m used to seeing them in the distance as their owners avoid other dogs.
I realize we’re getting well off the subject of brachycephalic dogs here, but to Adam’s reference to the intelligence of the GSD, I’d like to say I don’t believe there’s a lot wrong with the intelligence of most working dogs today. Sure, there are some individual dogs that are just plain dumb, and some that seem to be pure geniuses. Some shepherds from guarding and schutzhund lines may be a little “sharp” for the average pet owner, but on the whole what I’m seeing out there are good dogs trapped in destroyed bodies. It’s not the intelligence: not the “brains” of our dogs that have been destroyed by the show ring so much as their bodies. I own a ¾ wolf named Raven. He’s all one could ask for physically in a dog (at least my kind of dog), but he’s not a dog, and he daily makes me aware of it. He has the mind of a wolf, and no amount of training will ever make him a dog. But if by some magical wave of a wand I could put the brain of a good GSD into his body I would have all anyone could ever ask for in a good working dog. Bright mind and sound body combined.
DAC
I just saw this old pic of a woman and her pug:
I think I saw a snout. Weird.
Old Pugs had snouts. None of the modern flat-faced breeds were this extreme originally.
That dog is much prettier than modern roly poly flat faced pugs to my eye. Today, people would think it was a cross with a beagle or staffie.
How about pekes? First off, Looty direct from the Summer Palace.
And a selection of pekes that are not quite flat faced.
They were also tinier:
https://retrieverman.net/2011/03/05/pekingese-evolution/
If one is breeding a wooly foot stool, one has to make sure they are heavy enough to rest both feet on.
Bert (breeder of Danny the Peke which won Crufts) tells me that judges have now been instructed by the KC to look for a Peke muzzle, which should be the length of the first joint of your thumb. Well, it`s a start.
Bert is not amused.
Elizabeth
I wish the judges good luck with that one. Hell, Looty’s muzzle wasn’t even that long 150 years ago. Either that or I have freakishly long thumbs. I dare say most peke judges would think they’d had a brainstorm and turned up on utility day in the Tibetan spaniel ring.
Why do people always look so pissed in old photos? Because those were the “good ol’ days?” ;)
Often, because they had to remain still for the long exposures then required .And this lady, by the way she’s braced with her brolly and the chair, might be in pain from a bad back, or arthritis, or some such affliction.
Also, for the same reason that women don’t show their ankles in very old photos. Fashion. It was once ‘cool’ to look stern when you had your picture taken. ‘Say cheese’ is a mid 20th century concept.
I guess in the 80s she would have made a good goth chick! It was cool for them to look miserable too! Ennui! :)
One issue I see with the highly attentive very tuned into the owner breeds is they are too sensitive and reactive and require too much owner interaction to be satisfied. Lots of people with busy lives would be better served with a less attentive dog who is happy to occupy itself more.
One issue I see with the tuned into the owner breeds all the time is that the dog develops a little issue because of a minor incident (another dog has a scrap with it for example and dog is now careful around other dogs) the owner is distressed by this (more so than the dog) and because they are now essentially dog reactive (tense up ect) themselves their very sensitive eager to please dog becomes very reactive! Fast forward a short while and you have a dog that attacks every dog it sees because its owner becomes upset when around other dogs! This is classic with gsds of course as you have the eager to please ect plus the guarding instinct!
I recently worked with a huge white male gsd that had gone down this route, the dog was very aggressive but was just (in his mind) doing it for his owner. With the owner out of the picture the dog was fine with other dogs. When the owner came back the dog wanted to kill everything! I did some training to give the owner massive amounts of control over the dog so when the dog wanted to defend his owner the owner could tell him not to! This in itself resolved the issue as after lots of reps of this the owner relaxed around other dogs (cause his dog wasn’t tearing them to shreds) and the dog relaxed!
With less eager to please breeds you sometimes don’t have this issue! Though they may be more self motivated to do what you don’t want!
Adam
Pros and cons my dear, pros and cons! :)
Adam, I think you’ve confused ‘sensitive’ with neurotic. Many many retrievers are very attuned to people, and will be bed dogs and substitute children if so raised. But the same dogs would do fine raised in a kennel setting and trained up for gunwork. Many of them do well with the demands of guide dog work. SAR, or sniffer dog work. I don’t believe for a moment that Queen Elizabeth’s stable of Labradors at Sandylands are pampered house dogs. But I’ll bet many of their pups end out in well connected families where they are treated as family members.
A retriever with sound temperament will not ‘develop issues’ because of a minor incident.
In reply to Anna’s March 15, 3:56 PM post, “They cull quite heavily.” (there was no ‘Reply’ area above the date of her comment to click on); I assume “cull” is a euphemism for “kill”. So I must ask what’s the moral difference between breeders killing puppies between birth and six months old (or at whatever age they test them), and the same number of puppies or adult dogs being dumped at a shelter to be killed when no one adopts them? I do everything humanly possible to make sure no puppy I produce ever ends up in a pound, taking back any dog I’ve sold or given away that didn’t work out, and finding them good homes.
Culling chickens and pigeons is the acknowledged quickest way of producing a line that best suits your purpose, but raising dogs this way, while no doubt effective (towards meeting your goals), sounds rather ruthless to me.
DAC
In breeding circles, ‘cull’ includes spey and neuter . . . generally followed by placement in a pet home.
I didn’t say I agreed with it! Only that it’s what they do, since there are so few suitable homes for dogs like they are producing.
Anna, please don’t think I was criticizing you, only the practice of culling as I understood it, and my comment was made working under the assumption I got from Dave’s post that these breeders didn’t want their dogs in the hands of pet-buyers (the general public), so “cull” would naturally mean something more drastic than spay and neuter and placement in pet homes. Sorry if you thought I was criticizing you or assuming you practiced that type of “culling”.
DAC
Understood! I will cull (aka kill) pups with obvious health defects, like severe cleft palates & the like (I’m not going to spend a bunch of money & effort correcting physical defects or saving pups that won’t nurse only to have them grow up into weak, sickly adults. I firmly believe in selecting only for vigorous, healthy animals with whelp easily, nurse easily, & just don’t need a lot of hand-holding from me. I’m there, & I handle my pups from day one, but Mama should have it under control if she’s a decent brood bitch.), but when I do a breeding, I have a nice, long waiting list of suitable homes beforehand, homes that can handle the breed. It’s my belief that if you’re breeding for working ability, most pups in a litter should be capable of performing, so you shouldn’t have a bunch of not-so-good pups you have to “pet out” or cull. A good working dog is not necessarily a good producer. And if I had a bunch of physical defects, I can guaran-damn-tee you I would seriously rethink my breeding program! Depending on culling to get rid of surplus animals is not a viable option for me.
Several good points about the difficulty of re homing dogs that are bred for extreme working ability but which don’t quite have it.
Re sensitive v neurotic, I wasn’t really referring to gun dog breeds, as a rule I find gun dogs more independent than herding and guarding breeds and more temperamentally resilient. My point about the gsd was that his severe dog aggression was not really a natural aspect of his temp but one that occurred because of his natural attentiveness and protectiveness with his owner. If the dog had lived with another person who had been less disturbed by the minor scrap that started it all he would imo have never developed dog aggression. As you say any dog with a relatively OK temp can cope with minor incidents (after all some aggression is natural in social animals to establish a hierarchy), it was this dogs desire to please his owner that inadvertently created huge amounts of aggression to other dogs. As I aptly proved when I had the owner watch from his window the dog was fine loose in its own garden with 3 of mine, it was only when the owner returned that he wanted to munch them!
An earlier post mentions rage in frenchies. Here’s something I have noted about ”rage” it is most frequently diagnosis is dogs that have altered faces/heads. So short faced breeds and breeds with long floppy ears. My observation is these dogs do not have rage, they have a short fuse and very limited expression, which equals no observational warning to the owner. This appears to be rage (e;g sudden random aggression). It is also possible that altered head shape predisposes a dog to short fuse in some way.
Adam
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