On this April Fool's Day, let's explore the bunk, blarney, and fraud endemic to so many dog breed histories.
First, let us start with a generalized guide to bunko.
The secret is to slip a plausible lie between the pages of truth, while occasionally telling a truth that is so outrageous that your audience breaks its pick checking it for fraud.
For examples of the former, I recently posted the following breed histories to Facebook.
** Belgium's Lost Breed of Shepherd
** The Carter Pocket Terrier
** The Genenessee Valley Beaver Dog
** The Kill Devil Terrier
** The Bactrian Terrier
** The North American Pocket Lurcher
** The Monopoloy Game's Tort Terrier
** The Scarlett Point Terrier
** The Heugervein Wall Dog
How many readers thought these breed "histories," complete with links to detailed source material, were real?
More than a few!
But what about truth that sounds like bunko? For an example of that, see these old missives:
** The Congo Terrier
** Poodles in the Iditarod
The typical dog breed history is complete nonsense, but it’s nonsense that follows a basic structure based around a predicable set of content.
As an example of that phenomenon, I point to the alleged history of the "Coton de Tulear" dog (When Wild Poodles Roamed Africa), where we find the basics:
1. A specific location of creation, preferably exotic (Madagascar!);
2. An ancient "possible" provenance (somewhere back there in a 200-year span of time);
3. A big dollop of romance (Pirates!)
4. A weak claim for work (any dog can rat and rabbit);
5. A very recent date of Kennel Club registration (early-1970s);
6. A named person or two who "discovered" the dog (and who put together all of this nonsense "history");
7. A bit of ancillary garbage to give the illusion of granular detail;
8. A putative claim that the dog is descended from some other dog lost in the mists of time (in this case a "Tenerife Terrier").
Finally, three tests of your bunko meter. Are these statements true, or are they lies?
-
In the 18th century the price for admission to the Tower of London menageries was three half-pence or the supply of a cat or dog to be fed to the lions.
- The largest financial scam in the world was perpetrated by Bernie Madoff, and I knew all about this scam years before it was made public.
- I used to be trapped in the body of a woman.
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