Originally published at: Famed "His Master's Voice" dog breed on verge of extinction | Boing Boing
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I believe a lot of the terrier breeds are going extinct. Most of them aren’t terribly family friendly, are “spirited” and difficult to train. As we move away from dogs doing work to dogs being almost exclusively pets, the ones that make crappy pets aren’t going to be in high demand.
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Terriers not good pets? Wash your mind out with soap!
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Obligatory!
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Probably not enough Smooth Foxes left to hunt.
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I’m no best in show judge, but his muzzle looks to short for a smooth fox terrier.
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I speak from experience. Our family had a Welsh Terrier when I was a kid. Dog was a right shithead at times. Though my mother might have been half the problem since she couldn’t bring herself to properly discipline such a cute face!
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I’m a little sorry to hear this but I can also think of several reasons why the whole notion of “purebred” dogs needs to go.
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Breed extinction is nothing like species extinction - it feels a emotionally exploitative to frame it that way since I would generally feel bad about a species going extinct because of humanity’s poor stewardship. There are 200 registered dog breeds and the notion of pure dog breeds comes with serious consequences. I do not feel bad to hear of one pure breed of a highly successful species fall by the wayside.
This reminded me of a weird bit of dog trivia: the turnspit dog;
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I’m pretty sure my grandfather had one of these dogs. It was for sure a fox terrier; just not 100% on the smooth part.
That dog was the laziest thing I’ve ever seen. It laid in the side edge of his recliner all day, and whenever my grandfather got near the end of his (constant) bottle of beer, he’d signal the dog, who’d jump into his lap and flip over on his back. Grandpa would then feed the dog the last bit of beer from each bottle, like a baby.
I never saw my grandfather ingest water or any other liquid except an occasional bloody mary, thickly buried in ground black pepper. He thankfully didn’t offer any of that to the dog.
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That is an unnecessary aspersion on Nipper’s mother.
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Extinction of a wild species is a tragedy. Loss of something that we bred is an inconvenience.
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