The black dog, or why retrievers should be banned

I think it was two summers ago, on a street that Tinky-Winky and I traverse on our daily walks, two households got puppies. One was a large black lab. The other was an even larger yellow... lab, or something. The yellow dog had a fenced yard. The black dog didn't. Therefore, the black dog was allowed to spend the days at the yellow dog's house, playing together in the fenced yard. Everything was copacetic.

Unfortunately, puppies don't stay small forever. The two puppies became huge, and for lack of training, they became unmanageable. The yellow dog was gotten rid of. The black dog wasn't. But since it wasn't invited to play in the fenced yard anymore, it got tied outside its house. All by itself. So it started to bark and jump up and down whenever people or dogs walk by. This was a nuisance, so the people fixed it with... a shock collar. Which doesn't really work.

Since I've been home for a few months, I started working on that dog. I approach her to pet her. If she barks or jumps, I leave. If she's quiet, I pet her. So it took months, but now when she sees me coming, she lies down quietly and waits for me to come to her. Then she rolls over on her back. Did I mention it took MONTHS? Most people are amazed how fast I can get their dog to roll over. This one took months. (On the other hand, I had Tinky-Winky full-time for 2 1/2 YEARS before she would roll over, which tells you something about how headstrong she is.)

The other day, I was petting the black dog, and she was lying down quietly. A human came out of the house, and immediately the black dog was jumping and barking. The human yelled at her. (Why? The dog barks, you yell; the dog thinks you're doing what she's doing, then she does it some more.) Amid all the noise, I said to the human "she's getting better though, isn't she?" and the human said "oh, I don't know, some days she's ok and others she's just impossible."

Hmmmmmm...

No, I don't think she's impossible at all. I spend two minutes with your dog once or twice a day and she's quiet with me. You live here and she barks and jumps at you. That seem funny to you? Well it doesn't seem "funny" to me at all. Your dog isn't "impossible", she's bored and lonely. She wants to play. With another dog, preferrably, but she'd be happy to spend time with a human. When is the last time you walked her? When is she ever allowed to sit quietly beside you? She's tied up outside all day, every day, all by herself, watching everybody walk by and pay no attention to her. Poor dog.

It goes without saying, the black dog is not getting walked. I've seen her walking with her human ONCE and I was all happy that they were walking, but it turned out she had escaped and the human was only bringing her home. I feel I ought to walk her, but honestly, I don't want to. For one thing, she's at the farthest point of our walk from home, so it's really inconvenient. I also hate picking up after large dogs. It grosses me out. Also, Tinky-Winky hates her. And also, inevitably, she's gonna be a huge pain to walk on leash for quite some time. I'm a construction worker, so I can handle a fairly strong dog, but I don't really like to spend my walks doing that.

Also, because she's such a large dog, she needs to walk fast, not dawdle along at Tinky-Winky's whim. Tinky-Winky on the leash is painfully slow, because she's uncooperative. Every two seconds she has to pee, or scratch, or tangle herself in her leash, or pick sticky tree things off her paw pads, or smell something, or otherwise find anything to do that isn't walking along with me. It's takes us forever to get anywhere. Take the leash off though, we're like the wind. But that's a story for another post. The point is, a two-year-old lab needs to move a lot faster than an ornery 12-year-old shiba. In fact, in order to get up enough speed to get that dog exercised, I'd need a bike. And that's not in the budget for this year. So, I'm not offering to walk the black dog, and I feel bad for her, but I just don't really want to take on her problems. I also get the feeling that her female human is getting annoyed by my interference with her dog.

So that's one reason people shouldn't have retrievers. I don't know a single retriever who gets walked. People say "they're good with children." Yeah, well, they're very patient dogs, but that's absurd. Teach your children to be good with dogs, instead of expecting the dog to put up with them. You know what "good with dogs" means? It means you WALK THEM. Teach your kids to walk the dog. Three hours a day, fast enough that the dog is trotting, not walking. Don't worry about the dog being "good with kids"; the dog is gonna treat your kids a thousand times better than you're gonna treat the dog.

Nobody should have a dog they're not gonna walk, and no one I know who has a retriever ever walks further than the couch to the fridge. Some say they need the dog to hunt with, but first of all they don't train it for hunting, and second, what are you gonna do with the dog the other 363 days a year? Tie it out in the yard and ignore it? That's nice. Some poor dog is gonna spend his or her whole life crying in your yard because you want to feel like a big man with a gun a couple weekends a year.

Here is how you know if you need a retriever: do you spend two to three hours a day, every day, even when it's raining or very cold, jogging, biking or rollerblading? If so, get a big dog. If not, do you spend two to three hours a day, every day, even when it's raining or very cold, walking? If so, get a dog that trots at the speed you walk. If not, get a ferret. Some people, seriously, even a bearskin rug is too much of a pet for them.

The other reason people shouldn't have retrievers is that they're so prone to cancer. I've read somewhere that 40% of retrievers get cancer. Is that true? I don't know. But they sure don't last very long. Cancer in a dog costs thousands of dollars. A friend of mine has a pug who just got diagnosed with cancer. It cost over $4,000 just to diagnose her. She's 5 1/2 and she will be dead in a month or two. Chemo could buy her another month or two, but there's no money left for chemo. I think spending thousands of dollars on a dog with high medical needs is a waste anyway, but you can always get more money, and you'd probably waste it anyway. But the bigger thing is, YOUR DOG IS GONNA DIE OF CANCER. Why would you buy a dog so you can watch it die of cancer at a young age? Even supposing you're completely selfish (which you probably are if you're getting a dog that you're not planning to walk), and you don't care that the dog is gonna suffer, do you think YOU are gonna enjoy watching your dog die of cancer?

So that's why retrievers should be banned. Some breeds get banned because somebody decided to stick the label "vicious" on them, instead of putting the blame on the owners, where it belongs. Well, "vicious" dogs are only dogs that have been mistreated. Retrievers have miserable lives with people who don't take care of them, and then they die a slow and painful death. Isn't that being mistreated? Just because they don't turn on people doesn't make it ok. So they should be banned, not because they're dangerous to people, but because people are dangerous to them. You want to feel like a big man, buy a Harley. It won't mind one bit sitting in front of the house day in, day out while you don't take care of it.

The “next dog” conundrum

It occurred to me yesterday that I’m worrying for nothing about what kind of dog to get after Tinky-Winky. Not that I won’t have to face that decision sooner or later, but most likely, it’s going to be much, much later.

Dogs in Tinky-Winky’s family tend to live about 16 years, short of violent death such as cars. Tinky-Winky is 11, but doesn’t look even close to that old, so I’m rather hopeful that she’ll have an exceptionally long life. Twenty is probably too much to ask, but 18 seems plausible enough to me. So that’s seven more years, praise be to God.

After she’s gone, I’ll have a few dog-less years. Partly to avoid the “rebound dog” thing, but much more because I have some projects I want to pursue in life that just aren’t compatible with having a dog. So for a few years, maybe, say, five years, I won’t be looking for another dog. And that makes twelve years.

So let’s say ten to fifteen years, plausibly, before I have to worry about finding a new dog.

But I still worry about it. Partly because I’m not sure whether the things that annoy me with Tinky-Winky are her own idiosyncrasies, or really “breed traits” that I’ll have to put up with again if I get another shiba. I can deal with the attitude (sometimes barely) because I love Tinky-Winky. I don’t think I’d tolerate it from any other dog. Of course I could argue that she was already six years old when I got her, and if I had had her from a puppy, I could have raised her differently.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

So should I take a chance on another shiba when the time comes, or am I better off to go with a less cute but “probably” more cooperative breed like a Norwegian buhund?

It’s not for another ten to fifteen years. Why am I worried about it now? Why don’t I let it go?

Who knows. Talk to The Brain about that.

Another thing that’s begun to nag at me in the Next Dog Conundrum is the realization that the next dog is probably the last dog I’ll ever have. Ten to fifteen years from now plus fifteen years of the next dog’s life means any subsequent dog would almost certainly outlive me, and I don’t want to do that to a dog. So the next dog is gonna be the last dog.

Again, why is this gnawing at me? Who cares? Why does it matter?

It shouldn’t matter. But I have several dog names in mind and I won’t have as many dogs as dog names. I don’t believe in imposing names on dogs anyway; I let the name come to me as I get to know the dog. So I’d like to name my future dogs WHMIS, Riddick, Satī, Shi Huangdi and Cheka, but realistically, at most one of those will happen. Which of these five dogs might cross my path? Each name evokes a specific personality in my mind. But at most one of the five will become real.

It really doesn’t matter. Not for ten to fifteen years. Right now my precious has stacked all her doggy beds and blankets in a neat pile and is sleeping peacefully curled up on top of the pile… with one ear toward the fridge and one ear toward me. The last thing I need to decide now is “shiba or buhund.”

But it keeps gnawing at me.

You know what else looks like a shiba?

A Norwegian buhund. It's about 20% bigger than a shiba, and I bet it recalls a little better.

I gotta have this dog's babies

Isn't he just God's gift to bitches everywhere? He's a Shikoku inu and I don't know his name... but for my next dog I want his baby. (Photo by Kato the Walrus who writes Tora Inu.)

Also, "puggles" will ruin your literacy skills

My last post about the "designer dog" fraud drew many angry, rude comments from "puggle" fanciers, which all had this in common: they had nothing to do with what I wrote.

Hmmmmmm... Well that's amusing. Who would have thought that 100% of a self-selected sample of "designer dog" owners would have lousy reading skills and no ability to think rationally?

Ok, actually, it's very likely that I would have thought that. If you're buying into the "designer dog" thing, I'm not gonna have high expectations for you.

For those who can actually read, let me explain what's wrong with "designer dogs."

First of all, I've said this before, but there is nothing "designed" about them. The only design is to part fools from their money. Large amounts of money. A breed is designed and created over generations by selecting stock for desired traits, so that the end result consistently produces those same desired traits over and over when bred to the same breed. Beagles and other scenthounds, for example, are designed to have very keen noses, lots of endurance, and a one-track mind. Terriers are designed to be small enough to go down a burrow, tenacious enough to want to do it, and brave enough to face down the creature that lives in the burrow. Sheep dogs are designed to herd. Retrievers are designed to find the ducks you shoot and bring them back to you.

Are you following this? Breeds are designed, that is, they have a purpose. And they're bred selectively over generations to isolate the traits that fulfill that purpose. Most of the time the traits are either recessive, dominant but uncommon, or partially inheritable, so you have to make sure you bring together the individuals who best display those traits, in order that the offspring show the trait as well or even better than the parents.

In some breeds, particularly pugs, the desired traits are grotesque morphology and below-average intelligence. Whoever designed the pug should have been beaten bloody for the evil scum of the earth s/he was, because who would do that to a dog? It can't hunt for itself, it can't burrow in the snow, it can barely breathe or drink without choking. All it does it entertain people by its grotesquerie. It's the politically-correct twentieth-century version of the medieval fool: a stunted, misshapen human kept as a pet to entertain other humans.

Anyway. Let's consider now the "designer dog" fallacy. "Designer dogs" are not bred from two carefully selected specimens to enhance a desired trait. They're also not bred with a consistency of purpose. If someone was trying to create a new breed, the offspring that best displayed the desired traits would be bred to offspring of a like crossing that also displayed the desired traits, and on and on until the new breed was stabilized. That's not what "designer dog" breeders do, though. They just breed the same cross over and over and send forth the offspring into the world for $600 a head and don't care what happens next.

The original "designer dog" was actually bred for a purpose, which was to create a hypo-allergenic service dog by crossing Labrador retrievers with poodles. The offspring, predictably, was unpredictable in both its hypo-allergenic aspect and its ability to train as a service dog. It was also discovered that this was completely unnecessary, because well-bred poodles are very smart and perfectly able to train as service dogs.

The average "designer dog", however, is bred for the sole purpose of selling the puppies. The "puggle" is a particularly good example of the failure of that ill-thought-out cross as a "breed". If you look at photos, they're losing almost all of the pug phenotype, and no data is available on their success as hunting dogs. So the desired qualities of both breeds are lost. This is predictable if you care to remember that breeds are mostly from traits that are recessive, dominant but rare, or partially inheritable. Obviously the recessive traits of both breeds will be lost; dominant traits never breed true unless the recessive alleles can be culled; and partially inheritable traits are diluted by breeding to individuals that don't have them. So, you get something that has no specific traits by which you could write a breed standard, and that will not breed true.

Why is that important? It wouldn't be, if you don't care about predicting a dog's likely aptitudes, size and personality. But most people do care about that, and what's more, "designer dog" fanciers will actually tell you that their "breed" is such and such way. They're lying. There is no predicting what traits each parent will pass on, or how the various traits will work together. I know a dog who is allegedly a Labrador retriever x Belgian shepherd cross. It looks exactly like a lab... and is very aggressive like a badly-handled Belgian shepherd. I think it's a remarkably stupid cross because most people expect a retriever to have a mild, friendly personality. Breeding a dog who looks exactly like that but has an aggressive personality common in a completely different breed means people will approach your large, aggressive dog as if it was a nice friendly black lab.

Another problem, along the same lines, is when people decide after the fact, without any knowledge of a dog's breeding, that it's such or such "designer dog", and in addition, buy into the lies the "breed" fanciers have come up with about that cross's traits. Guessing a purebred dog's breed is one thing, and most people get it wrong a lot. A friend of mine once lost a Gordon setter and found it at the pound labelled as a "Rottweiler x spaniel." Guessing the parents of a mutt, even assuming both parents were typey purebreds, is an exercise in futility. Like the puppy in my previous post. It looks exactly like a bloodhound puppy, but that's not a breed most people have ever seen in person, because it's very hard to keep, so that's not somebody's first thought on looking at that puppy. Well, it was my first thought, but of course I spend tons of time looking at breed standards.

If you're going to assume it's a mutt, then there are many possible crosses. Clearly, it looks like a scenthound, though not particularly much like a beagle as they're never self-coloured. Other hounds that have the same body shape as the beagle include the foxhound and harrier, and I'm not sure how anyone pretends to know by looking at a mutt whether its ancestors were beagles, foxhounds or harriers, seeing as they all look practically identical except for height. The most you can say is that based on probabilities, there are probably way more beagle owners willing to breed them to anything that pisses on fire hydrants than foxhound or harrier owners.

Then again, why would it be a pug x beagle if the colouring occurs in neither pug nor beagle? One could assume that both colours are recessive and that the offspring are getting the brown colour from the beagles and the self-colour from the pugs, but that the tricolour or bicolour or gray coats are all recessive to self-brown. But then if we're going to say that, we're admitting that this cross is losing the most visible trait of each breed, and then how can we pretend that we're going to predict any of its traits?

Back to guessing the parents' breeds, again, why are we guessing "beagle" when it looks like a bloodhound? Bloodhounds are not bred by crossing pugs and beagles, so where do we get the idea that if it looks like a bloodhound, the most likely ancestry is pug x beagle? If it has pug in it at all, which there is absolutely no reason to believe given the absence of any pug-like traits, it would still make more sense to assume the other half was a bloodhound rather than a beagle. Because at least it looks like a bloodhound.

The whole thing is clearly futile. If you're getting a mutt from a rescue, it's a mutt. It's not a maltipoo, yorkipoo, cockapoo, labradoodle, puggle, boggle, borkie, pomchi, shichon, zuchon, glechon, porkie, shorkie, snorkie, or anything else of the kind. It's a mutt. M-U-T-T mutt. It might be a wonderful dog or a retarded creature who can't even housetrain, or anything in between, but you'll never know until after you bring it home, because as a mutt of unknown breeding, it doesn't have any predictable traits. Except that being a dog, it will probably eat, shit, sleep, and want to go for walks and chase living creatures.

On the other hand, if you're buying your "designer dog" from a breeder or a pet store, you're just being had. You're paying hundreds of dollars for something you could get for free from the shelter, and you're encouraging the unscrupulous individual who's selling it to you to continue adding to the dog overpopulation problem.

And that, more than anything, is what's wrong with "designer dogs." The very concept of "designer dog" exists strictly for the purpose of selling random mutts to gullible people who don't care about dog overpopulation. Then, they get a dog who's not what they expected, and it ends up in rescue.

If you want a dog, either get a mutt for free from the shelter and call it a mutt, or buy a purebred from a responsible breeder and call it a breed. Never buy a dog who's advertised under a portmanteau name, because they're ipso facto lying to you. Don't buy a dog from a pet store or a backyard breeder. In fact, don't buy a dog at all unless you have a very specific set of criteria and you've found the purebred that will match them. If you just want "a dog", get a free one from a shelter and call it a mutt.

And don't comment on people's blogs if you don't know how to read.

Seriously, get over the "designer dog" BS

A fellow blogger was given a dog, which looks like this:


"It's a puggle", she says. A reader commented that indeed, the puggle is a recognized "species."

Yeah... not so much. A "puggle" isn't a breed, it's a portmanteau word to refer to a dog believed to be a pug x beagle cross. Waste of a beagle, if you ask me, because why breed a scenthound to a breed with a nose so misshapen they can't even breathe? People do the dumbest things.

So I looked at the photo and it looks nothing like a pug. Not much like a beagle either, but certainly nothing like a pug.

"Oh yes he does," she says. "He has a wrinkled face."

And... your point is? Most puppies have wrinkled faces. Many breeds also have wrinkled faces as adults, such as... scenthounds. Imagine that. Pugs don't just have wrinkles, they have a squished face, which is a genetic deformity that has been bred for selectively, for no good reason, to produce things like bulldogs and mastiffs. And pugs. All dogs who are not very good at breathing, and in the case of bulldogs and pugs, not much good for anything else either.

Luckily, this puppy looks nothing like a pug. Yes, it has a wrinkled face. But it doesn't have a squished face, or bulging eyes, or a curly tail, which is very common in "puggles" if you look at the "breed's" official website. There's nothing about this dog that suggests it's ever even been near a pug.

You know what it does look like though?


A bloodhound puppy.

Not a highly typey, award-winning bloodhound puppy, but it looks like a bloodhound puppy. And you're gonna be sorry if that's what it is, because a bloodhound is a BIG HUNTING DOG. It needs tons of training, tons of exercise, mental stimulation, firm leadership, tons of exercise, and did I mention tons of exercise? It needs tons of exercise. Like a beagle, except tons more.

Also, most hounds bark often and very loud. That's what they're bred for.

Also, bloodhounds are reputedly difficult to house train. Or to train to anything, but most people never go any further than housetraining, so that's no big deal, maybe.

And also, bloodhounds are on average a medically high-maintenance breed.

So other than the fact that there's no such thing as a "puggle", maybe you shouldn't take home a puppy of unknown ancestry just because someone made up a cute portmanteau word for it... because in your lack of knowledge, you might be taking home a bloodhound that you'll never be able to handle.

There are two kinds of dogs: purebreds and mutts. Purebreds are bred from consistent stock to have consistent traits, so there is some predictability in them. Mutts are everything else, and you never know what you're gonna get until you try. And calling it a "puggle" doesn't make it anything other than a mutt. Or maybe a bloodhound.

That dog looks just like a shiba!

You think???

It doesn't, really. It's the same colour, and clearly a spitz breed, but it's not a shiba. Though I have seen people adopt dogs that look just like this and tell you that it's a shiba "with a strange coat."

Hmmmmm...

Ok. It's not impossible. But as for the dogs in these pictures, they're not shibas. They're Icelandic sheepdogs.

I've been looking at them for a while because I worry about what to do when Tinky-Winky dies. I can't imagine having no dog; I can't imagine having a dog that doesn't look like a shiba; and most of all, I can't imagine taking that much lip from someone other than my precious. So... maybe the Icelandic sheepdog will be a valid compromise. But hopefully I won't have to find out for many years yet.

Dogs I'm glad I don't own

I'm glad I don't have a sheltie. It's an attractive breed. I thought about it when I looked for the perfect dog. Now there is a sheltie on the street where I stay in Yellowknife, and I'm glad it's not mine.

The sheltie is always running. Always. It goes for "walks" with its person. The person rides a bike, and not slowly either. The sheltie runs like a maniac beside the bike but still pulls on its leash to go faster or to go check out other things. Then they get home, the sheltie gets tied in the front yard, and it runs back and forth along the fence like a maniac every time something walks by. I don't know what it would take to get the energy out of that dog, but I'm sure glad I don't have one.

I'm also glad I don't have a retriever. I've never even considered a retriever, because their "I love the whole world" attitude annoys me. I don't love the whole world. More importantly, what good is it that someone loves you, if they love the whole world anyway? I want a dog who loves me and only me of all humans. Even if I'm buying her love with food.

But the main reason I don't want anything like a retriever is that a retriever is a very large duck-hunting dog. No, really. I'm not sure why people with little kids buy retrievers. Because it's "good with kids"? There's no such thing as a dog that's good with kids. Some kids are good with dogs, not the other way around. I'm sure someone somewhere has had their baby eaten by a retriever and could tell you they're not good with kids.

So yeah, I'm not sure why people who have little kids and never walk further than around the block would buy a very large duck-hunting dog. I'm guessing they've never seen field trials for retrievers. I have. It involves making the dogs run through swamps and standing water all day. The dogs get absolutely filthy, but they sure don't get tired much. You have to keep at it for a very long time to wear them out. And then you still have a filthy, wet dog.

So then people take these very large duck-hunting dogs and think they're gonna walk them around the block once a day and it's all good... it's not. They're very large dogs with lots of energy. They pull on the leash, because they're not walked enough. The more they pull, the less they get walked. Then they find water or mud, get dirty and smelly, aren't wanted in the house anymore, and end up spending the summer on a chain in the backyard. Not getting any walks at all.

I'm sure glad I don't have a retriever, but I'd be more glad if other people didn't have them either. Unless of course they do a lot of duck hunting.

For the same reason, I'm glad I didn't end up getting a spaniel. My short list of dogs was either one of four breeds of spaniels, or a shiba. I'm thinking the spaniels would have been a lot more trouble than the shiba.

Altogether, I'm pretty glad I don't own a dog that's not a shiba.