Not all purebreds are overactive or brimming with enthusiasm. Others, according to outside agitators and extremists, have swung to the opposite extreme. Many replicas bred for the stage and sofa, it is said, have had their senses dulled and spirits broken to the point of lethargy. Fancy dogs seem uninterested, and uninteresting to all but the judges who praise them, the scientists who study them, and the hobbyists who buy them. Some breeds appear to be sort of stupid, leading critics to that political hot potato called “intelligence.”
“The dumbing of America has gone far enough,” the Washington Post wrote in 1994 in defense of the more traditional border collie, whose patrons were fighting against AKC recognition. “Yes, we have gotten used to falling SAT scores. . . . But we must draw the line somewhere. I say we draw it at dogs.”41 The concern goes beyond border collies, according to a study of thirteen thousand dogs conducted by Kenth Svartberg in 2006. The Telegraph reported that “the mental and physical agility of many breeds is being eroded.” Defining “intelligence” by a number of characteristics, including sociability and curiosity, testers concluded that dogs bred for looks, especially show dogs, were succumbing to “introversion” and “boring personality” in just a few generations. Pedigree favorites were “less responsive and not as alert or attentive,” more a source of concern among scientists than judges or hobbyists. Was this an example of form following function? “Perhaps the genes behind attractive looks could also be closely linked to those that cause fearfulness,” said Svartberg.42
Golden retrievers and yellow Labs could be the new dumb blonds, not due to pigmentation but because they’ve been inbred for coat color. Holding off on the sort of overblown generalizations that legitimized eugenics, another study, at Aberdeen University in Scotland (birthplace to goldens, Labs, and other sporting dogs turned couch potatoes), defines “intelligence” in terms of spatial awareness and problem-solving abilities. Distinct differences between breeds and mutts were observed. “With a pedigree as long as his tail, you might expect the pure-bred pooch to trounce his mongrel cousin in an IQ test,” reports the Daily Mail. “But it seems all that breeding may be for nothing. For when it comes to intelligence, scientists say the crossbred wins, paws down.” Researchers found that mixes were far better “on the ball” than pedigree dogs. Mutts were also cleverer at locating the proverbial bone, cloaked with a tin can before their eyes, than many pedigree dogs that didn’t “even realize it still existed.” These and other tests led the Aberdeen team to predict mongrel talents could easily translate into not only equal but superior performance for police, seeing eye, herding, and house pet work, if only these disadvantaged curs would be given a chance. Reverse prejudice? Seven out of the ten best problem solvers at Aberdeen were crossbreeds. The top dog wasn’t a border collie, or a springer spaniel for that matter, but an eyesore of a “collie-spaniel cross called Jet, which scored full marks.”43
Translating the dog’s traditional skills (or what remains of them) into contemporary uses, recent trends for service animals have been no less revealing. The retrieving tendency, for example, is needed for assistance work where the drive to happily pick up fallen objects comes in handy to persons wheelchair-bound. Sufficient size is also important for bracing the disabled or pulling vehicles. Golden and Labrador retrievers often fit the bill, but so do Labradoodles and Goldendoodles, says Jenny Barlos of Assistance Dogs of America.44 An individual dog’s intelligence and temperament, she says, not breed as defined by kennel clubs, ultimately determine who gets the job. “About 50 percent of the dogs that pass our initial evaluation do not make it to final training and I think that’s about average,” says Barlos. “The dogs that make it through initial evaluation are very few also.” In the greater scheme of things, it might seem that the heroic qualities attributed to goldens and Labs across the board are overextended. The minuscule number of high-profile individuals that even qualify to qualify are exceptional, perhaps negligible. A keen and lifelong desire to learn and work are essential, says Barlos, though admittedly some breeds with familiar faces in the standard shades are disproportionately represented. “AKC registration is not important to us,” Barlos continues. So why are so many goldens and yellow Labs seen visiting hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, and cruise ships? “They have a friendly public perception while having full access with their owners,” Barlos remarks. Perhaps it’s time for some affirmative action in the dog world. Animal Farm Foundation in upstate New York has not only been placing “pit bulls” (“We keep this in quotes,” it says) as family pets but also training and placing them for assistance work. At least one has become a search-and-rescue dog.45
While tasks like assistance, drug sniffing, and finding land mines demand exceptional skills and temperaments that may be found in certain breeds and nonbreeds alike, no-brainer therapy jobs are also subject to profiling. I’ve come across boastful owners of many a purebred prouder in recent years to add the title of “certified therapy dog” to the list of honors used as evidence of blood superiority. Everyone these days seems to be sporting a therapy dog on the sidewalk runway, and I myself am considering growing whiskers and applying. But according to Kelly Gould at Karma Dogs, which specializes in using rescued animals to help children with emotional problems, if species matters, “the breed has nothing to do with it.”46 Karma has had success with purebreds and mutts of all varieties. Certain breeds do tend to be smarter than others, says Gould, but that isn’t key to therapy work. “It’s the unconditional attention and bond that kids make with the dog that matters.” As the wisdom of the ages has always taught without the glamour of show rings and rigors of beauty standards, success comes down to the individual dog’s disposition and ability to leave the past behind for a second chance. Not only do dog shows tend not to improve dogs in this capacity, no matter how cute they look on television, perhaps they spoil them for other careers. A group of ten retired show champions, chosen by judges as best representing their breeds and prodigiously bred for consumers addicted to the scent of blue blood—applying for therapy work because what else could they do now that they’d lost their looks?—failed their training and evaluations across the board at Karma. Veterans of the stage had been rewarded all their lives for a very different sort of performance, leading spectators to believe formal perfection automatically fit them for any function. But standing and posing had left them too set in their ways, or perhaps their careers as therapy dogs had been sabotaged at birth. Many dogs are being “overbred,” Gould explains, careful to add that it was a nice gesture to try and give these former champions a break but sorry it didn’t work out for them. Regardless of breed, only “one out of ten dogs pass our test the first time,” says Gould. Pedigree and standardized appearance, it seems, have not been relevant, except perhaps in negative ways. One of Karma’s best success stories, a six-month-old chow mix with behavior issues, was turned around and made into a model canine citizen. “When his vest is on, he knows it’s work time,” says Gould. Goldens and Labs, based on her experience, are “kind of dumb” and not always the best “breed ambassadors.”47
So maybe breed is relevant, after all, if only to know which dogs, as a rule of thumb, to avoid? There may be no solid-gold 100 percent guaranteed way to improve dogs, a thought guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of purists everywhere. But like it or not, one likely route to making dogs a bit smarter, healthier, more emotionally balanced and useful could be to ignore breed standards and pedigrees—and mix the races!
Overbreeding for either form or function, it turns out, can result in losing both. Many purebreds are getting too “pure” for their own good (and ours). A tragic example is the German shepherd, one of the top working breeds throughout the twentieth century. When not being deformed for show rings and homes, many German shepherds have been made soft and unreliable in the field. As we’ve seen, police departments in the United States are dropping these dogs, but so are departments around the world. Attempts are being made to cross them with other breeds or to repla
ce them altogether with a Belgian Malinois, even in their land of birth, Germany, where they’ve been a source of national pride.48
Useful traits in overbred golden and Labrador retrievers are also being salvaged, and an unapologetically mixed heritage may spare them the sad fate of the German shepherd, with its vanishing skills and declining health. US and UK fanciers haven’t been keen on discussing recent developments, but for a variety of demanding services including assistance and seeing-eye work, the hybrid golden Labrador retriever has been found, by growing numbers of experts beyond the show ring, to be more reliable than either side of its family tree.
“Golden Lab” shouldn’t be confused with the latest yuppie affectation on Manhattan sidewalks, where the yellow Lab is made to sound more expensive. Not even the Queen of England calls her yellow Labs “golden.” In fact, golden retrievers weren’t even called “golden” until the twentieth century, when the fancy decided to up the ante and make “yellow” dogs sound fancier. If people are going to be pretentious, they could at least get their facts straight. The golden Lab proper is a true hybrid that goes against the rules of pedigree breeding, a rough type selected for ability, not looks, a dog that would go unrecognized by name droppers but for the colored vest. A practical solution to excessive clinginess in goldens and excess enthusiasm in “nice but dim”49 Labs, the new and improved version is no freak exception but a growing trend. Guide Dogs, a major provider of working animals to the UK, reported in 2010 that 47 percent of their success stories were golden-Lab crosses. At last count, in 2011, 55 percent of all the dogs they used were either golden-Lab or Lab–German shepherd crosses (and only 30 percent and 9 percent, respectively, were “pure” Lab and golden).50 Similarly, but on a smaller scale, Guide Dogs of America reports that in 2011, among graduates successfully placed in jobs, 25 percent have been golden Labs, an increase of 23 percent in just one year from 2010.51
Final proof that best friends can break their molds, and a sign of dog days to come: search and rescue dogs, themselves rescued from death row in shelters, and many of these mixed breeds, are heroically overcoming every disadvantage life has dealt them. “When it comes to selectivity, Harvard has nothing on these pooches,” says a 2013 article on dogs trained by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation.52 Federal Emergency Management Agency–certified graduates, animals once abandoned as useless, are rising to challenge every cliché on desirable appearance, family history, and environmental influence. Yet despite the marvelous talents and personalities of these and other exceptionally smart, temperamentally balanced, trainable, and useful animals, fans aren’t holding their breath for an appearance at Westminster or Crufts anytime soon. Golden Labs and less calculated crosses aren’t likely to be “accepted,” “approved,” or “recognized” because they don’t conform to the eugenic standards of any one breed. As hybrids, they aren’t bred from eugenically “pure” bloodlines.
It may be possible to breed a better dog, however narrowly or broadly that is defined, but this isn’t likely to be accomplished within the dog fancy’s eugenic tradition where practical concerns are compromised by conformation. In any event, and whether they’re black, white, or parti-colored, the needs of truly useful, working dogs can be too much for the average dog owner to handle, and the golden rule for finding the perfect pet may be simpler than imagined. For the vast majority of canine consumers hoping to live out virtually those legends of heroic ancestral deeds, who believe that pedigree papers give them possession of unrivaled talents hidden behind coats of arms borne by noble beings whose forebears supposedly lived in palaces, who crave convenient formulas and precise measurements for “predictability”—when all they really need is a nice companion who won’t bite the kids—there’s that one-size-fits-all advice said to come from the ASPCA, though its origins have been lost with the wisdom of the ages:
If you can’t decide between a shepherd, a setter, or a poodle, get them all . . . adopt a mutt.
CHAPTER FIVE
A FRICKIN’ MENAGERIE
Rounding a corner in the far West Village, I led my daily trio of crazy terrier mixes toward a remote dog park on the bank of the Hudson River. This might have been a calm and uneventful afternoon. The sun was out. The air was clear. The area was quiet and pleasant, with well-kept houses, some of the oldest in New York. Flowering vines crawled up ancient brick facades. Quaint, shady side streets with narrow walkways didn’t have enough traffic to interest even the muggers. I felt safe in an upscale neighborhood that everyone knew was “good,” though the caliber of my crew was questionable to all we passed.
In fact, there was no telling what might happen next with this wild bunch of ill-bred curs. For people who craved the myth of predictability, the mixed breeds I was hired to walk didn’t bring comforting feelings of familiarity. They had no recognizable brand names. One nondescript specimen, judging from his long and cottony but substandard speckled coat, appeared to be a Wheaton gone awry. Another random mutt had a head that didn’t seem to fit, and a tail that looked Crazy-Glued to no good end. My third mixed bag had an awkwardly long torso and wiry hair, pointing to the possibility of some bastardized dachshund. My disorderly crew was not what fanciers had in mind, but shared one distinction that might have saved them in a purist’s eyes. I could state with near-certainty that each member of my pack had a few ounces of genuine Jack Russell blood coursing through his veins. Oskar and Sebastian had the right body. Max had the right head. They all had the right attitude. I often fantasized about bringing them to the AKC on Madison Avenue and asking for certification. Surely, these three half-breeds had enough Jack among them to qualify for one pedigree. . . .
My daydream of a world without border collies was shattered, and my leadership challenged, the moment these feisty mongrels caught wind of another dog across the street. Throw a few terriers into a mix and you’re asking for trouble. They were practically foaming at the mouth, trying to get at the strange dog they’d never even seen before. Normally, what set them off were skateboarders and raving lunatics, or well-dressed yuppies wearing headset phones and speaking to the air. These things launched them into a rage, and understandably so. What was it about this dog? My own mutt at home, a shepherd mix who defied description, liked to save her venom for the bulldogs. Whenever we were promenading and encountered this bizarre style of dog with the flat, motionless face, glaring bug eyes, and perpetually exposed teeth, my Samantha always got upset. The animal across the street that had riled my ruffians didn’t look like a bulldog at all, but he’d managed to strike a nerve. From deep within three misleadingly cute and cuddly frames emerged one hellish sound so ferocious that it chilled me to the bone. These dear, sweet little darlings wanted blood, and they didn’t care how “pure” it was.
Across the charming old brick street, in front of a time-weathered, Federal-style house with peeling shutters and a mossy facade, was a pet more typical to this neighborhood in recent years. Since rents had skyrocketed and most of the interesting people had been exiled to up-and-coming Brooklyn, mutts had been moving over for their social superiors in the Village. Corporate couples with three-headed baby strollers took over those narrow walkways, and indigenous dogs were displaced by prestigious pedigrees trotting alongside with names like Airedale, Cavalier, Labrador—and the specimen before us that day, the lofty golden.
It’s a proven fact that when neighborhoods are gentrified, the dog populations change accordingly. A 2008 study in Toronto mapped that city by pet preferences.1 Predictably enough, the higher the income, the more likely people were to have golden and Labrador retrievers. Less affluent areas were left with their lesser breeds, perhaps “pit bulls” or dogs of no recognizable variety. Stationed across the street on this elite block of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, planted on a corner of this most sought-after locale in all of New York, was the final word in doggery, an AKC aristocrat with papers to prove it. The golden was universally accepted as a breed apart, even by fanciers forced to settle for purebred dogs of other color
s. Standing there, in his kingly coat of golden fleece, was one of humankind’s proudest achievements, a gold standard against which all inferior types were measured, a pooch in a superlative shade and the polar opposite of the mangy mutt. A few yards away and straining at their leashes, my disadvantaged terriers did not like him in the least.
Curiously, this dog appeared to be oblivious, which both I and my terriers found alarming. Any pup so young should have been alert and enthused, ready to exploit every sight, sound, and scent on the pavement. Instead he posed handsomely like a statue in lustrous garb, a lion’s mane on a beast supposedly invented by a true lion of the British Isles called Lord Tweedmouth (another name that Monty Python could have coined). Firmly mounted on perfectly shaped feet, “round and cat-like,” as the English standard demands, he stared into the distance nonchalantly through his ample upholstery at something of another world. He did not make a sound, and as my pariahs lunged and snarled with teeth bared in passing, I noticed his eyes were sad and sunken, red and vacant, the sort that say an animal isn’t quite right in the head. This poor, privileged pup was trapped inside that gilded coat, inbred to a ghastly extreme. I suspected he was living his life without friends or enemies in a pure, hermetically sealed environment. My scraggly regiment of rejects also knew there was something awfully wrong with the animal, which stood there confused and despondent. They wanted this dog dead—and he could keep the coat.
A Matter of Breeding Page 11