You can't walk on water if you can barely walk.
Dogs forgive us for they know not what we’ve done.
It is a blessing that our dogs don’t know how sick they have become at our hands and thus don’t blame us for mess we’ve made of their genetics. Right now there’s probably a blind double merle puppy licking the hand of the callous breeder who brought it about and a French Mastiff who is taking its last breath at only 5 years old totally unaware that a community who knew better cared more about type and ribbons and breed purity than about robbing this dog of two thirds of its potential life.
Our dogs don’t ask us where their vision and hearing went; or who robbed them of their tails, their ear tips, their gonads, their hair or their coloration; they don’t lecture us like human teenagers do about ruining their lives when we make decisions for them; and after we strip them of their natural gifts we so rarely ask them to go and get a job even though they are ever more eager to do so than the children we raise.
And it is because our dogs are so blissfully unaware of their own mortality and the blows to its quality and quantity that we have inflicted due to our own vanity that we must now also act on their behalf to rectify the wrongs we have done to them and begin atoning for our sins.
Dogs are certainly Man’s best friend, but what sort of friend have we been to dogs?
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Short, sweet, and well said.
Karen recently posted..Multitasking
I’m sure if they could dogs would reconsider the bargain they made when they threw their lot in with us so many centuries ago.
Jan recently posted..Dog sledding—the spirit of Jamaica
Amen. Well said.
Carolynn recently posted..Whose a Big Deal?
Given that most wolves are endangered, dogs still made the right bargain. And while we may mourn what conformation breeding for some stylized idea of “beauty” has done to them or even what excesses happen in breeding for the “winner” in performance, the vast majority of dogs, at least in the US and similar countries, live longer and better than their wolf cousins. We need to keep things in perspective here. For the GSD that is over angulated, etc, there are also still HGH GSDs that work sheep all day, guide dog GSDs, Military / police working GSDS, etc. For every BC that has an issue, including CEA, etc, there are probably dozens, registered or not, 100% purebred or not, living perfectly decent lives on someone’s farm, ranch or doing work of other kinds. It’s easy to get dismayed, but we have far better tools to make it better than we did even 10 years ago.
I’m not bemoaning the greater human-dog bond, nor the dog’s place in our culture. I think both are in rather good shape. Dogs are elevated beings and well loved the world over but increasingly so in Western Culture where they are rapidly filling the emotional place that a brood of children once did.
I’m really speaking to the breeding elite and the self-proclaimed protectors and promoters of breeds. Unlike nuclear families, dogs are almost universally outsourced in origin, so although we have many fantastic owners doting on their dogs, the product they purchased on the market is a defective one.
Dogs do have it better than wolves, but do dogs today have it better in all respects than dogs 200 years ago? Yes and no. Owners and Vets and Trainers and a slew of vendors and businesses now cater to dogs as elevated pets. There’s a lot of serious thought, scholarship, and marketing aimed at dogs now. But from the perspective of the elite, the breeders, the fancy, and the keepers of the stud books… I don’t think the last century has resulted in a net benefit.
More thoughts on this next Monday. But to keep you thinking, until then, can you come up with examples of how we have improved dogs (genetically or in other ways) in the last century and some?
Heh. I got a post in the works about how dogs and humans have been revising their contracts, very much like how a union and their employers negotiate every year.
Dave recently posted..Suit Up!
Christopher: Do we know what we are doing to our Canine Families here in the United States? I have read several reports that reveal that in Contrast to European Countiress overwhelming majority of dogs in the United States are neutered or castrated. Unlike in European countries were neutering is commonly avoided and not promoted by animal health authorities.
Found some example studies.
Sweden study of 461 dogs reported 99% were gonadally intact…
Hungarian study intact 57% dogs.
United Kingdom 46 percent are intact. These castration and spays are performed before the age of one year. Continuing studies are revealing neutering dogs has direct effects on joint disorders, hip dysplasia and cancer.
I think that any disease / genetic disorder that occurs after 6 years is probably a plus for dogs of any breed. In herding, most working cow dogs have a working lifespan of about 6 years. If they get old and are kicked, they can die. Prior to modern times, veterinary care pretty much guarenteed they died. Ditto for dogs that got distemper or rabies, and when it first showed up, parvo. Consequently, one has a vastly different sample of dogs say, in the middle ages that are older than 6 years compared to modern dogs. Therefore, any PRA selection tool (late onset, like with ACDs, who now have a dna test for it see http://www.optigen.com/opt9_test_prcd_pra.html) is something that yes, probably has been a plus for ACDs. Before that, if a working dog went blind, it pretty much died — but not necessarily before it passed on those genes to offspring. Rottweilers have significantly less HD than they did when OFA started doing the hip tests becasue now we can identify it and elimniate dogs that have HD but don’t show it enough to eliminate them from the gene pool.
If the public buys dogs that have significant health issues (English Bulldog) instead of highly similar breeds that don’t (American Bulldog, Old English bulldogs, Spanish bulldogs) is it entirely to be laid at the feet of the breeders or is it a case that the public buyer doesn’t care enough to make decent selections? Yes, the E. Bulldog has become a grotesque — but it is, IMO, both the breeders AND those who select such dogs (judges and buyers) in preference to other options. And again, there are “bulldogs” (American Bulldog, etc) who live without most of the medical problems seen in the English.
Evolution has resulted with H. Sapiens predisposed to serious back problems and certainly for the females to have trouble birthing (note the C sections and deaths in childbirth for women without medical care) — should we complain to Evolution because we aren’t as sound as a more perfect design (which kinda points out the lack of any intelligent designer)? Humans have indeed done a lot of things wrong with dogs, but the AKC/UKC/ kennel club dogs are not the majority, even of those who are identifiable breeds. What we need to do is start REWARDING those who do the right thing rather than just zinging on low hanging fruit of those who do the wrong things.
Peggy Richter
I am sorry Peggy, while I do agree with you for much of that commentary, I have to contend the lifespan of a working dog. It’s entirely subjective to the need of the owner and the environment they are raised in.
In some cultures, a dog isn’t expected to live long, ie. the tiger-hunting laikas of the Amur. Similarly, a cow-dog is washed out pretty early on due to the nature of the cattle industry. In other cultures, a dog is expected to work into their teens ie. some of the herding dogs and hunting breeds found on small land-dwellings.
Dave recently posted..Suit Up!
Peggy maybe a rather late reply but can not agree when it comes to spinal degenerating disease such as Degenerated Myelopathy. A Chronic poloygenic recessive disease that expresses late and generally after the age of six. Breeding could have occurred passing the disease on to another generation.
I did say cow dogs. I agree, the lifespan of a working dog is very subject to the need of the owner and the environment. Dogs that were used to hunt wild boar or even wild deer didn’t live nearly as long as dogs used for say, trailing. It’s simply a more dangerous job. The same applies to WWI and WWII military working dogs – in Belgium, any dog that looked like it might be used for that role was shot on site by the Germans. This decimated the Belgian Shepherd populations. By and large, dogs prior to the industrial revolution were either rich men’s things or serious working tools. One of the issues in the original “animal welfare” was the kind of overloading done in Belgium with dog carts — while dogs can and do pull sleds and carts, the kind of overloading done in many countries was certainly not condusive to long life or health. In Eskimo culture, which could not sustain a person who could not pull their full weight, a “retired” dog was simply not something they ever considered realistic. On the other hand, even in Roman times, people had “pet dogs” of the small fluffy and small shortcoated variety and these were generally cherished and cared for as much as possible.
We tend to forget these things.
Peggy Richter