The Kennel Club’s Designer Dogs

People are funny in that so many simply do not observe, and when they see at all, they do not ask or understand.

Take dogs.  People will repeat that old chestnut that  “form follows function,” but in fact form doesn’t follow function — not even in that sentence.  

A dachshund and a terrier do the same work and are morphologically different. Setters and pointers do the same work and are quite distinct.  And what is the function of the Boston Terrier, Coton, Maltese, English Bulldog, or Scotty?  None!

A Patterdale Terrier does not look too much like a Jack Russell, which does not look too much like a Border Terrier. Smooth coats and rough do equally well in the field, as do coats of black or white, red or brown, or any combination in between. A folded ear is the same as a prick ear, a black nose the same as a liver-colored nose. Every working earthdog breed has a different head shape, and many have different tails as well. A perfect scissors bite is not necessary for work.

Form is form, and function is function, and the relationship is more often tenuous than observed.

And then there are the nodding know-nothings who decry every doodle, puggle, or chiweenie as a “designer dog,” seemingly unaware that their English Setter, Standard Poodle, or Boxer is the REAL designer dog, whose “standard” comes complete with a list of scantlings and architectural-quality elevation drawings.

These Kennel Club designer dogs are, for the most part, not ancient breeds. The supposedly "ancient" Ibizan Hound and Pharaoh hound, for example, turn out to have been made up within the last 140 years or so -- no doubt bred to look like the drawings and sculptures of sleek, slender-necked canines with pointy ears and long snouts seen on the tombs at the time of Carter. As for the Norwegian Elkhound, which supposedly dates back to Viking dogs, it turns out to have originated no farther back than the past few hundred years. 

Using 96 distinct patterns in genes — called "microsatellites” — researchers compared dogs within breeds, and breeds with one another. In the May 21, 2004 issue of the journal Science, the team concluded that almost every breed was surprisingly distinct genetically, and only a few were very old.

A few surprising gleanings:

▪️Ancient dogs included a very motley assortment of dogs found all over the world: the Alaskan Malamute, the Siberian Husky, the Samoyed, Basenji, Saluki, Afghan, Lhasa Apso, Pekingese, Shar-Pei, Shih Tzu and Akita.  German shepherds, which might have been expected to be in the either the ancient group (due to their resemblance to wolves) or the herding group, were found to actually be more closely related to to mastiff-type dogs, such as the bull mastiff, the bulldog, and the Rottweiler.

▪️Herding dogs, included such obvious members as the collie and the sheepdog, but also the Greyhound.

▪️Terriers and scent-tracking hounds, such as spaniels and setters, were deemed to be of relatively recent European origin. This should hardly surprise anyone -- almost all of the terrier "breeds" were created after 1800 and most after 1860 and the beginnings of the Kennel Club and livestock shows.

Bottom line:  most breeds are not very old, all were created by mixing and then inbreeding, none were created in the Kennel Club, and all are very much “designer dogs’ complete with brochures and books explaining how the ephemeral minutiae of one breed differentiates it from others within a more robust type.  Designer dogs?  Absolutely!