I suppose my point isn’t that breeding is bad per se, but rather that it is a historical anachronism. 99% of all dog owners do not require anything approaching a service dog of any sort (especially in the historical sense of dog ownership). Our post-industrial society places virtually no demands on dogs in general (aside from the overblown stories filling the pages of kids magazines and TLC “documentaries”).
Most people would be far better off with a dog that has a reliable chance of not developing any of the dozens of maladies that are particular to specific breeds. Which is to say, people would be better off, on average, with healthy dogs, and that means mutts.
Following your analogy, we would have bred corn for teosinte, just because it comes in fancier colors and a cute, tiny size.
We wouldn’t have the two Siamese that we have if it weren’t for unscrupulous breeders. Our standard Seal Point looks very much like the Siamese of yesteryear, which is why he ended up at the pound (plus, he’s soooooooo quiet - everyone expects a chatterbox out of this breed). Our Flame Point was literally tossed to the curb because she has a tiny grey streak on her nose, and she has the Manx mutation (also pretty dang quiet). They’re awesome kittehs and it’s likely their replacements will be cast-off Siamese we find at the pound, too.
I understand your point. But you are making pretty broad statements, which exclude most of the dog owners I associate with. I do have some relatives and acquaintances who have mean, inbred little “rat dogs”. That is what we called them when I was growing up. I don’t mean it as a pejorative towards their owners.
But there are also plenty of people I know who use herding dogs for herding sheep and cattle. Also hunters who use dogs that excel at pointing and retrieving. Those are the sorts of tasks that dogs were originally bred for, and there are still people who rely on those breeds for the same tasks today.
Training a dog to properly do those jobs is an expensive and time consuming task. A puppy bred from dogs who are known to perform well may not have what it takes. But starting from a genetically advantaged group of puppies greatly increases the odds that they will be able to learn to herd by hand signals or whatever.
What I am really trying to say is that there are plenty of people who are breeding dogs very carefully to produce healthy, intelligent, good natured dogs who have a natural talent and disposition towards performing complex, specific tasks. It does them a disservice to lump them in with the people who produce horribly inbred abominations.
Do you know who else thought that certain populations good be given an advantage by starting with a genetically advantaged group?
Dog breeds are just eugenics by another name.
(I am being deliberately obtuse, by the way; I am mostly a closet eugenicist myself and hold to the ideal that if we develop tools that can be beneficial to society we have an ethical obligation to use them. But I also believe in calling a spade a spade. The same logic that informs the debate on dog breeds lays the same foundation for overt racism. It’s a slippery slope that demands more attention than the glib acceptance that passes for discussion among pet owners.)
Knowledge need not be abused. The basic knowledge of heritability is what connects plant hybridization, animal breeding, and eugenics. Acceptance of one does not necessarily lead to the misuse of the other.
But again, I see your point.
So what? It’s just a word for selective breeding, what we’ve done for about 10,000 years. If you think dog eugenics are immoral, you should not visit a grocery and see what we do to cows and chickens. Part of what makes us “civilized” (if we are) is that we don’t do to each other what we might do to the plants and animals under our control.
There is also confusion between working breeds that are bred for working, and working breeds that are bred for show. English Springer Spaniels, for example, are effectively two breeds, field-bred (smart and healthy, at least in the UK) and show springers (nutty and prone to problems). Hunting springers are also easy to groom: you shave them.
The kennel clubs are mainly about show dogs, and the measurables they breed for have nothing to do with performance or health, which is why so many purebreds are problematic.
Our last dog, a pound-rescue mutt, was stupid as anything and had health problems most of her life. Honestly, purebreds can be as good or better than mongrels if they are bred for intelligence and temperament and vigour instead of coloration and ear length.
For what it’s worth I am nominally an economic vegetarian, which is to say that don’t use my money to buy meat (though I will eat it if someone has prepared it as part of a meal). Factory farming is definitely related to this issue as I see it.
Labradors are amazing duck hunting dogs for breeding reasons. They naturally love the water, have a double coat with a lot of skin oil, naturally love fetching, and naturally have such soft mouths if you give one an egg, it’ll carry it around all day without breaking it.
Some training is required to refine the skills, but they’re all there as part of the breeding.
Herding dogs will naturally try to organize people and animals. That’s a trait we’ve bred into them.
Pointers point whether you ask them to or not.
Which isn’t to say all breeding is good. The pug comes to mind. There’s a poor animal that’s been bred to suffer for their whole short, fat, hypoxic lives. And honestly, I think the moral thing to do as their creators is to stop breeding pugs at all and let them die out. It took quite a few generations to get them this screwed up, and I, personally, don’t think it’s worth causing more poor dogs to suffer to breed them anywhere near genetically healthy again.
Or require they only breed with beagles. Puggles are adorable, they look like tiny mastiffs! Yeah, apparently they’re a mixed bag, but better than pugs for sure.
At their best, Puggles are people-friendly, enthusiastic, trainable best friends. At their worst, they’re stubborn, selectively deaf, uncooperative and just not that into you.
I met a beagle/terrier lil lady the other day in an elevator, and I just about lost my mind. Basically a mastiff face on a beagle body, tail straight up and vibrating. Unnnnh… Want!
Note: I’m a beagle pop. He’s the best boy! Also has very very expensive congenital condition, IVDD, which has left him partially paralyzed. I don’t care! He’s the best boy! When he had surgery, the clerk at the front desk casually remarked that we could buy a Honda for that much money. If I was impolite, I woulda told her to shove that Honda where the sun don’t shine, but alas…
My wife and I have a pact that we won’t go there for a pet, so far so good. But I do understand. I hope you can afford it, we have friends who did it but really couldn’t. I may be wrong and catch a lot of grief for this, but I think having children, at least still in the house, inoculates you from getting so invested in a pet.
On our own, no way. Fortunately we have an amazing circle of friends and family who were able to help us in many ways, and not just financially, for about the first month after his surgery he pretty much needed rtc companionship. We still added quite a bit of debt once all was said and done, and certainly now he’s a bit more expensive with all the rehab, supplements and special food. Still, all together a meaningless sum compared to the impact he has on our lives.
