Natural History

Photo by Casey Biederman of baby Quest. 

When I started down this path of being a dog writer, I bought into this basic framework:

Purebred dogs were okay, but the only legitimate ones were performance-bred ones. Breeding a purebred dog for aesthetics was ultimately going to lead to their downfall as a species. If you didn’t accept that framework, then the dog you should absolutely get is one from a shelter, whether it’s purebred or not.

If you read my early posts, that was the basic ideology. I pretty much disavow those ideas.

I’ve lived with several dogs of true working strain, and I must say the average person has no business owning one. You have to put in your time and effort into exercising that dog.  It doesn’t matter what kind of working dog it is. Dogs that are bred for a purpose will have really strong behaviors that might not make them easy to keep as house pets.

If you want a true working line dog, then you must be willing to commit to it, and if you cannot, please consider getting a different kind of dog.

When I initially started writing about dogs, the No Kill Revolution was in its infancy, and shelters were killing scores upon scores of adoptable dogs. Now, we have connected shelter systems. Different municipalities have agreements with shelters where the demand for dogs is still very high, and as a result, popular purebreds and mixes of those breed generally tend to wind up in loving homes once they are surrendered.

What this has done to animal shelters is that it has created a real problem. The least desirable dogs are a pit bull types or BBMs (bull breed mixes).  I have nothing against these dogs at all, and I always been against BSL. I know there are great dogs of these breeds and mixes that make wonderful pets.

However, the modern world has made it so that these dogs aren’t particularly in demand.  Municipalities have BSL. Homeowners policies say you can’t have one, and yes there are some of these dogs that require lots of dog acumen to manage and keep safely. If you have the dog skills, you can easily find one of these dogs to be exactly what you want, and there certainly are dogs of this type that are superb pets.

But unless you know what lines you’re dealing with (and in the shelter system, you won’t), it can be a dicey choice. This is not to denigrate anyone with a pit bull.  Lots of these dogs are fine as a pets. I just fostered a dog of this type that is wonderful with other dogs and not aggressive in the slightest.

But not every dog of this type is for the typical family, which you can say about a lot of breeds. For example, the Malinois breeders do a pretty good job unselling their breed to the general public, but because pit bulls and pit bull types are deemed undesirable, the opposite has been true with their advocates. Part of it is because the dogs vary so much in what they can be like, and part of it is because of the need to find these dogs good homes is certainly

So yes, you can go to a shelter and rescue a dog, but rescuing a dog is not the only choice people have.

And that’s where I think we should be easier on dog breeders. These are legitimate sources to get an animal that may have some consistency in behavioral and morphological conformation, and they don’t have to be hardcore working bred.  Most people can handle a show-bred dog that has been selected through generations for dogs that are tolerant of strangers and strange dogs and to be a good traveler. That’s why all those old dog books said to get your pet dogs from show breeders. After spending as much time with show dogs as I have in the past year, I think the process is good for selecting for good pet traits, just by accident. It is not universal in all breeds or lines of course, but it clearly is something that should be understood.

Finally, I was a follower. I was a dumb young kid with lots of idealism and lots of demons and general stroppiness that needed to be worked out. I followed what was essentially an authoritarian movement in dogs, led by someone I think who generally lost the whole story. Following his work now, I can see that his ideas don’t help dogs at all now. He says that we should own only true working dogs if they are purebred, which is the only legitimate reason for owning a purebred dog, even if we live in a high rise apartment and cannot handle anything with real drive. Then he tells us to go and rescue a dog, but the shelters have mostly pit bulls and BBMs. Then he tells us that we shouldn’t get one of those because they are all dog aggressive and nasty (which isn’t exactly true). So if you’re the typical family, you are given no real place to get a dog. It’s simply a one-upping cul de sac that ultimately puts people in impossible positions when it comes to getting a dog they can handle and live with.

So it’s funny but I’ve become so much less judgmental. I’ve developed an open mind, and I reject the authoritarianism of the movement I was once part of. And I couldn’t be happier.