There are few things more smug than pedigree dog breeders who drink the AKC koolaid. Not only do they believe that they are achieving high art through mindless ribbon and fad chasing, they think they’re actually producing ideal dogs and are thus ideal people. Artists. Platonic sculptors of flesh and hair. It’s vicarious achievement through social climbing.
The structure of dog shows perpetuates this attitude by giving out ribbons like candy at Halloween. Classes at shows are broken down by Best in Show, Group, then Best of Breed, you’ve probably heard of these. But they hand out so many ribbons within the breed that at least a dozen people who didn’t win Best of Breed can still walk out of the ring knowing that they’re at least better than someone else that showed up!
Dogs that you’ll never see on a televised dog show that still go home with ribbons are the first through fourth place in the following inner-breed categories: The runners up for Best of Breed, the Best of Winners, the Best of Opposite Sex, the Reserve Winners Dog and Reserve Winners Bitch, then Best Puppy, Best 12-18 Months, Best Novice, Best Amateur Owner Handler, Best Bred By Exhibitor, Best American-Bred, and Best Open class.
It’s not enough to be smug just within your own breed though. That’s where the hierarchy comes in. If you’ve got a high maintenance breed that requires serious hairdressing skills like the sculpted Standard Poodle, the Rastafarian Komondor and Puli, or the Pantene commercial ready Afghan Hound, Lhasa Apso, Pomeranian, or Pekingese you’re instantly better than people who have pedestrian dogs that are low-maintenance. You can blame this entry-level-smugness for the sudden proliferation of hair once a breed is captured by the show world. No one but a ribbon chaser would bother to keep a Yorkie in a show coat with individually wrapped coils of hair or pluck the dingleberries out of their Shih Tzu’s terminal-length hair after every movement, or fashion snoods for their Afghan’s ears and belly bands to keep urine from soaking their belly hairs.
People who have dogs that are still functional are clearly bourgeois. A dog is art because it exists, not because of any existential ability. Herding dogs are for peasants. Working dogs are for brutes. If the dog is actually tasked with some performance, it better be in the pursuit of leisure and preferably something you have to get dressed up for. Bonus points if there are horses or estates involved.
This of course is predicated on popularity. Even if Golden Retrievers were once bred on Highland Estates and used for blue blood sport, they’re now tainted by being a favored companion to the hoi polloi.
It’s much better if your dog is functionally obsolete, so that there is no one but the show breeder who can make grand claims about “preserving” the breed. Better to “preserve” it for absolutely no purpose whats-so-ever, then there won’t be those pesky “working” people and their crazy ideas about function trumping form.
The next level of smugness is the cultivation of an obvious deformity. Any sort of dwarfism instantly makes you an arteur-on-the-edge. Short and bowed legs, truncated spine, compressed faced are like the Gold Package on that luxury sedan. Show types have bred snouts and tails so short they’ve passed the zero-mark and are becoming ingrown, eclipsed by folds of yeast-harboring rolls of skin. Deformities that are rare or even unique to your breed are even more fodder for smugness: the eponymous ridge of the Rhodesian Ridge Back, the Chinese Crested’s hairlessness, or the abundant folds of the Shar Pei, and the missing tail of the Corgi.
Some breeds like the Pug combine so many of these issues their poor little eyes bulge and fall out, their skin festers in infectious rolls, their noses recede into their skulls causing their soft palates to pool in their throats, and their fragile little limbs have to bend around their rib cages or protrude from their hips which are insufficiently wide to birth naturally. Collecting nearly every form of dwarfism in one package makes the Pug owner quite smug.
They’re really only trumped by the likes of the Pekingese. Not only are Pekes also endowed with every form of dwarfism, they are fur-bound and “Ancient.” Now this claim doesn’t have to be verifiable, it’s good enough if your dog merely looks like it could pop off of an old piece of parchment from Asia or papyrus from Egypt, like the modern-recreation of the Pharaoh Hound. The junior class in this category trace their dogs back to some famous royal, like Queen Victoria, but the real go-getters strive for something much further back in time. Dalmatian fabulists claim that medieval frescoes in the Balkans show their dogs and Basenji owners claim that African Pygmies gave their breed to the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs as tribute.
While there’s not a single dog breed on the planet that can trace its actual pedigree back more than about 120 years — and most far sooner than that — there’s no shortage of people who will claim that their “breed” has been “pure” for many hundreds, if not several thousand years!
Double special bonus smug points are awarded for any breed which was not high maintenance, obsolete, disfigured, nor ancient 100 years ago but has been “improved” into one or more of those categories through breeding and creative breed history myth building.
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With “ancient” in scare quotes, of course.
Yes! They just didn’t fit the graphic.
A month to go for Westminster and already chafing at the bit eh? Well, the truth speaks volumes and this one had the decibels way up!
Years ago I used to take offense that the herding group was, not only shown last ( so useful, yet so back-ended), but that only the GSDs ever seemed to have a chance of getting ahead; perhaps the most deformed of the lot thanks to conformation whimsy.
Now it’s just all rot to me.
The GSDs only got ahead when they were backed by the Firestone heiress.
Yes, they were first backing Collies.
It would be amusing if it wasn’t so true. 🙁
Do all Border Collie people have such (evident) contempt for other breeds? It seems that every BC person I meet believes that only dogs who herd sheep are real dogs. What a pity there are so few sheep!
You’ll have to wait for my Hierarchy of Border Collie Smugness.
That ought to be interesting! BC people can be smug on so many levels – about being too good for the AKC, about importing dogs, buying farms and sheep specifically for their dogs to play with, collecting the most sporty titles, about being “not for everyone”, and of course rescuing dogs that aren’t for everyone and placing them with nobody (because nobody’s actually good enough to own one).
No offense, of course – border collies seem like pretty cool dogs, but they sure do have a lot of baggage. So do Jack “Parson” Russel Terriers.
You’ve nailed a few of the categories I’ve put on my pyramid.
All dogs have baggage. Baggage that humans project onto them.
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Not just Border collie people but Pit bull,Belgian Malinois and GSD people as well. Sometimes Australian cattle dog,Sheltie,Kangal,wolf hybrid or CAO owners can be bad about it too.
Working,sporting and show dogs can lead to a lot of big ego’s.
So far I have put Pits on the top as most obnoxious owners,its kinda sad because I do rather like the breed.
I’ve found the Malinois people to be especially so. It COULD be some of the actual police and trainers, but by and large it seems to me, to be the people into protection “sports.” I think they are largely responsible for taking this breed/variety and bringing it to a level of hyperness that fits a certain image, but not always a good work style.
Many of them find disgust with the notion that they are even HERDING dogs. Today’s mals don’t HERD! Phah! Stuff and nonsense, so they say.
Sad.
Here’s a blog that just has Mal smugness all over it. It’s not entirely incorrect. There are many mals that really don’t belong in the average pet home, just like many border collies don’t.
And the blog is well designed to make people who saw Dogs 101 and the Mal epside re-think the consideration of adding one to the family. “I run 2 miles 3 x a week. I’m active! I can do this.”
Well, it takes a little more than that.
However, what is completely glanced over is the fact that there are various LINES of mals in existence. They have varying levels of “on”, depending. And it’s not just show vs work. There’s also a lot to be said for individuality within a litter. I’m sure many an egotistical breeder won’t say much about any pups they breed that are any less than over-the-top.
The blogger also assumes Mals can ONLY be used for bite work. That is pure rubbish.
The comments say a lot. They vary of course, but to me that just goes to show the dogs and people and situations in real life do vary.
http://bayareadogtrainer.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/note-to-the-american-public-belgian-malinois-look-dont-touch/
One of my favorite comments from the Bay Area blog. Made me, for once, actually sort of side with conformation folks ( though I really don’t care for the conformation mals in general. They sure look much more squared off with teensy heads).
“The blog article unfortunately reads more as an advertisement to people looking for the next big, tough, bad-a**, macho dog primed and ready to be the next Dobie, Rottweiler, Pit Bull fad. Malinois Rescue is already overwhelmed with dogs from people trying to make big bucks selling to law enforcement, watch for an uptick after this recent burst of publicity.
The elitism of sport people regarding Malinois and their only true purpose in life is ring, anything else and obviously you must be talking about one of those worthless “conformation” malinois, is amazing (probably only matched by those conformation only people looking down their noses at the appearance of sport dogs).
The Malionis and the rest of the Belgian Shepherds were assembled by Prof. Reul and developed as jack of all trades SHEPHERDS that were versatile enough to be used for other purposes. The jacked-up, out of control Malinois without an off-switch is just as incorrect as a technically pretty dog with no drive whatsoever.”
LOL! “Hot, tempered steel”, “hardness”, blah blah blah (Labradors are phlegmatic? that’s a first!)
Somehow I get a picture of someone dressed like Rex Kwan Do who has some, ehem, compensation issues. Sorry, and this may be rude, but folks like that should maybe go out and purchase a tricked out motorbike and a couple bottles of performance enhancement instead.
But I have seen this — especially from the schutzhund groupies, and some “working only” people (don’t get me wrong; I love a good working dog…but this sharp to the point of crazy is actually…well, not a good quality in a good working dog…something our military and police forces still haven’t completely figured out yet I’m afraid — some of their dogs are really not that great).
And yeah, they are breeding some truly crazy dogs — which they turn around and hawk to an unsuspecting, awe-struck (thunderstruck?…if you know Apache pilots you’ll get that one) public.
From what I am understanding Jennifer, a lot of the mals that are just a big pile of crazy, bred for the military, are a result of the competition among people who make breeding for military and police work a business.
Getting them hyped up for crazy then reigning that in with E-collars and prongs and chokers, takes less time and thought than refining a dog’s focus abilities and taking time to form a working relationship.
Sidebar: Actually, I am not 100% against e collars, unlike what seems to be an increasing trend these days, where many want them outlawed entirely. But I do think they are unnecessary for about 95% of dogs I see; dogs in general. Still, not fair to intentionally create a dog that NEEDS that sort of treatment. I guess the enforcement folks have no choice but to embrace the “life’s not fair” ‘tude.
I’m sure not all breeders and professional outfits are that way, but you make a great point about the public. What happens to all the “off” animals who don’t make the cut, or need re-homing? A lot of Military dog rescues are out and about now. I’m not familiar with them all but it stands to reason that not all of them are as honest with what dogs are even placeable as they should be. The rescues are run by humans as flawed as those in any other rescue and likely have the same issues here and there. I’m just supposing.
My family is military (generations, extended) — they all consider it a huge mistake to adopt out military dogs (some of the sniffer dogs are ok, but the other dogs have been hard core — and usually not that well — bite trained).
Most of the dogs I’ve seen worked by the military and police have been really wrongly bred for reactive aggression (rather than steady nerves), and have been wrongly trained through intimidation/dominance (which of course just makes them more reactive) to the point that it has become a vicious circle, and you can barely find a dog or trainer anymore who doesn’t think this is the normal, and right way to go about things — and then they feed the public this…along with their training methods and their crazy dogs, because there is money to be made selling the same (and like the shelters, they tell the public, “oh, they are that way because they are purpose bred and trained — not like your sweet Rover, these dogs are special == if you can’t deal with it…). Along with playing to the public’s paranoias which lead the public to even want a dog like that in the first place.
I’m of the opinion myself that no family dog should ever be bite trained — ever — I don’t care how nice or steady it is. Once that dog is bite trained it is no longer your pet/companion (that the link got right) ; leave that to police/military/security. If your dog barks at the door, then it’s doing an already fine job of being a home security device for you (and which is a reason why I don’t think people should get too angry at their dogs for, reasonable, barking at the door).
I’d have to look it up, but somewhere in the USMC archives is a photo of my dad’s war dog, and a letter from my dad making the case that “a baby could take his food away, he’s so gentle with people” — this was a Doberman, bite work trained, veteran of many combat missions and medal recipient (and according to Dad this dog loved to bite more than any other dog he had ever seen; he said he was an incredibly sharp dog, afraid of nothing, and willing to go at anything — in fact, my dad had scars on his hands from their first meeting). But here he is in a plain training collar, in public after the war, and in the letter the handler is bragging about the dog being so soft and biddable with handlers that “a baby could take his food away”.
The difference in philosophy is striking.
How many of them now would brag about that (rather than something else?); and how many dogs now could be trusted in a public appearance where the public gets to lay hands on them, and they are only in a plain collar?
Heck, how many dogs now have 3 years straight combat duty, get medals for taking down the enemy, and go back to do public appearances, with their handlers bragging about how easy they are to live with?
Sorry for the rant. But there’s a very sweet, very submissive type woman at the local dog club who has a Mal that she got from some breeder who makes a big deal about their dogs being used by military/police…from the “finest European working lines” (but of course).
It’s a beautiful dog; a very well mannered dog — on the leash. The minute she lets it off leash it goes after anything in the vicinity. Off leash there is no control over that dog. She’s quite over her head, and the dog is a liability.
It shouldn’t be that way. I question selling those sorts of dogs to the public, and I question any breeder who breeds dogs who are that uncontrollable– I can’t see how having a dog that is that unbiddable would be an asset to military/police.
Jennifer I enjoyed your rant and I’m sorry to say that none of it surprises me. And just going by the reactions of FB group members on some of the Mal pages, to anyone who remotely suggests that they should be bred for stability, I’d say you may be quite right when you say it’s too hard to find a trainer that believes in stability. I certainly have no reason to doubt you or believe otherwise.
Although some of the more rational comments from the blog post I put up earlier give me some hope.
Well, as stated, some sensible people are beginning to take notice and, being sensible, don’t want dogs like this (and don’t want to have to live around them either).
To be fair, I crack on Border Collies for this too — I love a good working dog, but there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and some of them have gone a little too far over the line (plus a lot of people don’t get the knack for training them — the old stock dog guys we got our dogs from made it really clear that one of the first commands you start putting on a BC is “that’ll do”, otherwise you’ll wind up with a potential problem; now, if you don’t teach that and on top of it you have a dog that doesn’t really have an “off” switch…worse, you think having a dog with no “off” switch and your training methods are such that you rev the dog up even more, and that’s somehow a sign that hot **** aren’t you the hotshot trainer since you’ve got this hotrod dog…).
A good idea might be to ask the people who have to live around you and your hotrod dog whether it’s a whole lot of fun or not.
“I’m of the opinion myself that no family dog should ever be bite trained — ever — I don’t care how nice or steady it is. Once that dog is bite trained it is no longer your pet/companion (that the link got right) ; leave that to police/military/security.”
I completely agree with this. A trainer friend of mine was meeting a neighbors Leonberger puppy for the first time. The pup was very pushy and mouthy and his bite was actually hurting her, so she pulled her hands away and gave some sort of verbal correction. The owner immediately snapped, “Oh, don’t do that….we are training him for bite-work'”. They planned on doing French Ring with him. This dog lived in a in a small house on a tiny urban lot, in a neighborhood filled with kids, other dogs, elderly, etc. He was living as a “pet” dog, but being trained for bite work.
I never understood how you could do both, train for bite work and still have the dog as a safe pet, because the goal of raising a pet dog is to reward and train for bite inhibition. That’s critical for a pet dog to have, so that, if at any point the dog is pushed beyond it’s threshold, the damage it will do will be minimal. Pet dogs are subject to all kinds of stimulation and situations that could prove stressful, and it’s important for the dog to control it’s bite, and if pushed to the limit, control the force of it’s bite.
I know plenty of dogs who have “nipped” people, including kids….but the outcome was not serious, because the dogs managed to control the force of the bite so that the skin was not broken. I can’t imagine what would have happened in those same scenarios of the dog had had formal bite work training.
I remember reading about schutzhund as a child and in their Q&As, one “Q” often was “Won’t training of this sort create a weapon?” etc.
The answer was always that specific training tests for a special, steady temperament, whereas the dog works WITH You and learns under what circumstances it should bite. That in effect, means that a dog that has passed schutzhund training and has earned certain level titles, is a more reliable dog than one that is untrained and untested.
I have never gotten directly involved with the protection sports. I really would like to witness more of it, whether or not I got involved, so as to have a real idea of whether or not these claims hold true.
If I had to guess, I’d bet that perhaps the ideal stood true at one time, but a lot of dogs probably “pass” that really shouldn’t. We live in a world that seems to lower standards quite a bit these days. People want to do what they can to pass so they can have ribbons and titles. ANd people who administer sports want lots of participants who have done well, so their sport looks good.
But I never understood, just how each dog is supposed to truly know exactly when to bite. If you have a naturaly protective animal, it seems to me that time would be better spent simply teaching it discipline and to resist it’s urges under your commands, than to encourage biting impulses. I’ve also seen that some of the exercises involve letting a dog guard something, such as a basket. And the dog does show force without biting under some circumstances, WITH biting in others.
There could be any myriad of circumstances under which someone may come near an object of yours. Why on earth would the average person leave their dog to guard some small object, to the point of biting a stranger, when that stranger could end up being a small child?
Human social situations are incredibly complex. No dog can possibly know when it’s okay and not okay to bite in every case.
And even if you do choose to bite train a dog, at least choose one that has the intelligence to learn real discipline and control.
A dog as huge as a leonberger combined with average dog intelligence, is a huge mistake.
If you YouTube schutzhund + ANY breed, you will find what you are searching for. Labradors, Berense Mtn Dogs, australian cattle dogs, lots of dogs that most people pick because they are reknowned for NOT being bitey, or dogs that are naturally nippy and it’s a FIGHT to teach impulse control, and other choices that are entirely inappropriate due to their placid nature, which can screw a dog up, and downright dangerous because they are all too eager to do the job and forget you. I don’t know why people suddenly have the need to show “their” breed can “do it all”, including THIS! But it’s becoming more commonplace.
I dread watching a dog like a Caucasian Ovtcharka or Fila Brasilerio being taught bite work. A dog like that had better live on a hundred acres of iron fenced estate, complete with handlers and cameras. A dog like that would be a serious threat in a suburban neighborhood.
For people who have found a particularly favorite breed/type, there can be a bit of “my doggy breed is the bestest”. Call it the blindness of love if you will.
But most sensible people get over this to a certain extent.
Well, one person isn’t representative, but…not at all.
Border Collies just charm me exceedingly, but I’ve met many from other breeds that I like very much (and one, due to prior bad personal experience, I’m not fond of one breed at all…but that’s more to do with an incredibly bad run in with an incredibly bad dog…that breed has given me the cold sweats since, and I”m useless around them…but that is a personal thing and not indicative of any value judgement other than my own).
I just find that the BCs do fit my personal tastes and personality better than others, but to each their own — different strokes for different folks (but what some of those strokes other folks have gone and done to a lot of breeds of dogs I consider to not be good at all….but there are folks out there doing the same with BCs and turning out some nightmares too, so there’s that).
I think “not for everyone” does have value: not every type of dog is going to be a good match for every type of person — I don’t expect everyone to love BCs; I can understand why another breed/type of dog may be more near and dear to someone else.
I think we should all be able to agree though that some of the things we have done to these dogs (that we profess to be so in love with) isn’t at all loving or attractive, and that we should be willing to change that if at all possible. And to criticize that is perhaps not critical of the dogs persay, but what has been done to them.
I loved the writing ion this articale . It made me laugh though the subject is no laughing matter. Dogs recapitulate the way royalty used to be. About the time royalty got over it- kinda- the dog “fancy” took up eugenics without a clue (on the most part) of what they are aping through their mutts. Yeah, mutts- inbred as all get out -highly refined mutts. Mutts with every good feature bred out so as to create a mechanical precision in turning out matching dogs like they were a series of ball bearings.
How dogs can live with only 10% or less of the entire dog genetic pool resident in their breeds is the amazing part. That and what dogs teach us about engineered evolution, lol. “Purebred dogs are on the verge of becoming the animal equivalent of homeopathic attenuation of the canine gene pool.
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Special points also seem to go to rare breeds . . . high status if there are so few of your breed that you can’t avoid inbreeding, or have to travel to distant lands to find a stud who will lower rather than raise the COI.
It also helps your smugness score to require (??) a really obscure, special diet, say, camel and sweet potato.
I agree with this to an extent. I mostly have friends in the show and agility world with the same breed as me. We aren’t really smug about it we actually don’t want our breed getting into the wrong hands, yet there are plenty of dogs to go around to keep the gene pool healthy.
I love my breed and wouldn’t own anything else but a lot of people want my breed because the Internet loves making them into memes. And another article on Yahoo named them a “good choice for busy families”. Um NO. They bark and they shed and they need mental activity or else you will be very sorry with what they come up with.
The people I met that were the smugest of all were the extremist rescue owners – mostly of Pits or mixes of such. It is a shame because I love Pit Bulls.
I have my first border collie boy and he is as active as a male and is handler hard to be a border collie. I have had him since he was a puppy and was now after a lot of obedience training that I am now able to start doing obedience competition. In order to get him to work I had to train a lot of self control where he was not allowed to take a ball without me saying yes, and he is not allowed to greet other people and dogs. My border collie is from isds line. My dog will go nuts if he do not get 1-2 hours of obedience training each day along with 5 cm bike rides. Apart from this he is real nice dog that love people and love to play tug of war and catch balls.