Pets are everywhere, it's official.
As I was sitting in the waiting room at our local Subaru dealership, waiting for the endless amounts of paperwork required to buy a car, I was drawn to an article in the NY Times magazine on the rise of and controversy around the hybrid dog in the US, The Modern Kennel Conundrum by Jon Mooallem, Feb 4, 2007
Still, past canine fads, like the run on purebred Dalmatians after the movie “101 Dalmatians,” have ramped up production at inhumane, large-scale “puppy mills.” And fickle owners often end up abandoning those dogs once the trend passes. Thus, for show breeders who have spent much of their lives studying and refining a single pure breed — like the men and women congregating next week at Madison Square Garden for the 131st annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show — the rise of mutts as commodities has been bewildering and embittering. Many traditionalists see mixing breeds as somehow irresponsible in and of itself. As one pug breeder with a two-time, No. 1 show bitch to her credit told me: “There was only one really perfect thing on the face of this earth, and he was crucified. To us, the pug is pure.”
It's an excellent article putting forward many facets of the issues surrounding breeding dogs for looks, both purebred and hybrid.
For example, considering the Puggle (a Beagle mixed with a Pug):
- mixing breeds is a good thing as it reduces the incidents of genetic conditions that any one breed might have
(Beagles are susceptible to cleft palates, demodectic mange, dwarfism, epilepsy, eye problems, hip displasia, hypothyroidism, intervertebral disc disease, luxating patella's, and reproductive disorders, and Pugs are prone to deformities of the mouth and nose, eye and eyelid problems, heatstroke, hip displasia, Legg-Perthes disease, luxating patella's, Pug dog encephalitis, brachycephalic airway disease, democidosis, skin fold dermatitis, and corneal disease)
Given the roughly 350 inherited disorders littering the dog genome, crossing two purebreds and expanding their gene pools can be “a phenomenally good idea,” according to one canine geneticist — if it is done conscientiously.
- on the other hand, taking traits from two breeds and mixing them might make things worse.
While designer-dog sellers often claim to combine only the most functional and lovable qualities of each breed, here I was being told just the opposite: that mixing breeds would create an intractable slop house of each breed’s most problematic traits. “A pug has no doggie sense whatsoever,” said Jutta Beard, who had driven to Oconomowoc from Maryland in her motor home with one husband and 13 pugs. “You put this dog out on the next street over, and it will never find its way home. Now a beagle has wanderlust. It’s a little hound breed. It puts its nose to the ground and just goes. So now you’ve got a dog with wanderlust and no doggie sense.”
There's a whole lot more to the article than this about world of the purebred dog and the new hybrid dogs and I highly recommend you read it (you'll need a subscription in a few weeks unfortunately - or go to your local library and read it from the archives). It really is a fascinating window into a world you might not have seen into before.
