If dogs are pretending to love us, then they are damn good actors.
I have some issues with Masson’s work. I would have loved it if he’d included a description a dog preying on some animal in Dogs Never Lie About Love.
He covers every part of their natural behavior but that one. If you see a dog acting as a predator, it can be a moving experience. It can also be terrifying if you’ve deluded yourself into believing that they don’t have these instincts. For someone like Masson, I think he would find it rather disconcerting.
He’s also one of those animal rights people who talks about these issues in a way that reminds me of how the Christian right talks about abortion.
The fact that he’s on the left makes no difference. It puts me off.
I think a better discussion of the issues can be found here.
That said, I do believe most birds and mammals do have emotions and can experience pain and suffering. And all of them will experience a certain level of suffering at they live their lives.
Most wild animals die horrific deaths. A hunter’s bullet causes far less suffering than the other “natural” ways these animals die.
We have to accept that this world is partially maintained through death. Despite our intellect, man has not created a world that transcends the simple realities that all things die and in most deaths, there will be some pain and suffering.
We can either deny these realities, or we can work to mitigate them.
And that’s where our focus should be.
***
Why is it that dogs are able to form bonds with species other than humans?
It has more to do with agriculture than the fact that dogs just like making friends.
When we domesticated other species, we culled those dogs that tried to eat our sheep and goats.
Those dogs that formed bonds with our sheep and goats and protected them from predators were given special treatment.
Charles Darwin noticed that most Western dogs learned very quickly to leave domesticated stock alone, while dogs from South Pacific and Australia could never be trusted around sheep. Darwin, like Masson, believed that it was the love of man that caused Western domestic dogs to leave stock alone.
I think it’s more likely the result of this early selective breeding.
Of course, Western dogs are not universally safe with stock, but I have known some fierce hunting dogs that learned to leave pet ducks alone.
When I was growing up, a predatory Norwegian elkhound and even more predatory farm collie learned to never touch my pet Muscovy ducks. The elkhound did kill one duck because it was eating out of dog’s food bowl. The elkhound wanted to discipline the duck for breaking pack rules, and the duck didn’t survive the punishment.
I also know of Walker coonhounds that can kill a raccoon in less than a minute but think the world of their owner’s cats.
Somewhere in domesticating the dog, the animal has evolved an ability to recognize which animals are prey and which animals it should befriend. For a predatory animal, that is quite an accomplishment.
I think some study is needed on this aspect of dog behavior. Maybe this will fit in nicely with the theory that dogs are very good at following rules. Rule following in dogs is being extensively studied in Hungary at Eotvos Lorand University’s Department of Ethology.
What I am about to explain here might be offensive to curly-coated retriever owners. It is not intended to be.
I am merely quoting what Harding Cox, a retrieverman of the late nineteenth centuries and early twentieth centuries, thought of the breed. The breed has definitely changed since then, because it is no longer a “fancy” breed. It is now bred for sound working conformation and ability by its dedicated breeders.
Cox wrote the section on retrievers in W.D. Drury’s British Dogs: Their Points, Selection and Show Preparation (1903), and to be fair, Cox was a flat-coated retriever enthusiast.
He begins his section on retrievers with this somewhat Spencerian prediction:
That the Curly-coated Retriever is doomed to practical extinction is a notable and an undeniable fact, which must be put down to the inevitable law of the survival of the fittest…For every Curly-coated dog (speaking of the recognised show type) used in the field, or exhibited on the bench, there are now a score, at least, of Flat-coats. (333).
Whoa.
Cox explains that reason why the curly lost favor in the British gun dog circles did not have much to do with their lack of tractability or their supposed reputation for hardmouth.
Cox contends that the real reason why the curly was not favored at time is that it was thought of as a show dog, not a working dog:
There seems to be a prevailing impression that the average disposition of the Curly-coated Retriever…is not as sweet and benevolent as that of the more popular dog [the flat-coat], and that he is less tractable. The writer’s only experience of these animals is in the show-ring, and he confesses that he has always found the exhibits mild and friendly enough. Probably the real reason of their unpopularity lies in the fact that they are more or less a “fancy” breed (345).
In this analysis, the real reason why the curly lost favor in Britain is because it was a dog bred solely for the show ring.
After all, this breed does have an unusual feature that is difficult to breed. Their coats do not withstand any crossbreeding. If you breed a curly to Labrador, you will have a dog with short hair and some wave to it. At this time, though, crossbreeding different strains of retriever was a common practice, and thus, the curly missed out on some of the experimental breeding that goldens, Labradors, and flat-coats experienced.
If you’re breeding for that feature, you’re not breeding for working ability. You’re breeding for the coat and for the rosettes that this coat will win you.
And that’s a recipe for disaster for a working dog.
If all the competitor breeds are being cross-bred and selectively bred for work, and you are breeding for a peculiar physical feature, your dog will not be able to keep up with them.
And the curly nearly went into extinction as Harding Cox suggested.
Of course, the flat-coat didn’t remain top dog in the trial circuit. After the First World War, the Labrador, which had been developed from breeding recently imported St. John’s water dogs with flat-coats, Chesapeakes, and all sorts of other dogs (including pointers and foxhounds), began to come into its own. The flat-coat developed a bad reputation for being hard to handle and for having possible borzoi ancestry (sight hounds are known for being terrible retrievers.) The yellow version of flat-coat became a separate breed, and it became the secondary retriever to the Labrador.
Nearly becoming extinct actually proved to be a blessing for the curly, for now the only people who were breeding them were truly interested in producing the best possible dog. The modern curly is now a dog with good working conformation and retrieving instinct, but most people don’t know about it. If the average person sees one, I guarantee you that the first question will be “Is that a Labradoodle?”
Losing popularity isn’t such a bad thing.
***
Today, the top working retriever is the Labrador. Most waterfowl hunters in North America go for Labradors.
In fact, the Labrador is now even more popular than its flat-coat predecessor. It is now the most common dog breed in the world.
The golden is the secondary dog. It is the curly of today.
However, this breed still remains common enough, although its popularity in Europe has started to drop off. In the US and Canada, it is still a very popular breed.
Most golden retrievers are rather like the curlies of the nineteenth century. They have been bred for their novel appearance alone. Working ability has been secondary.
And many working retriever people pass the golden over.
It is just a matter of time until the golden begins to really lose its status in our society.
When I first heard of them, they were touted as being very easily trained and very good natured.
A few years ago, they were touted as being very good natured and much calmer than Labradors. (This isn’t necessarily a good thing, because extremely calm dogs are on their way to losing their working ability.)
Now, their temperaments have become far less reliable than they once were.
As things have progressed, the golden is not thought of as a working retriever. It’s thought of as a fancy breed for yuppies to own.
All of these factors set the golden up for meeting a very similar fate that befell the curly in the early twentieth century.
Is this a bad thing?
Well, as I said before, losing a lot of popularity was a blessing for the curly. It allowed only the most dedicated people to breed them.
And with all the problems that the golden is facing, the only way to solve them is for the breed to lose some it of its popularity. Too many stupid people are breeding them.
If the demand for cute little golden retriever puppies would just drop, dedicated golden retriever people would be able to breed good dogs once again.
***
It amazes me how many comments I get whenever I offer even a tepid criticism of a breed. I usually don’t attack individual dogs, but I do attack breeding practices. However, these criticisms are viewed as affronts against an individual dog, which may be sound, smart, and healthy.
I have nothing against the curly-coated retriever.
In fact, if you read this post and didn’t know any better, I bet you’d think I hate golden retrievers.
The truth is that I can offer a criticism of a breeding practice or trend within a gene pool and still respect the individual dog.
Every dog breed and every bloodline within a breed or strain has its virtues and vices. We need to be honest about them.
It’s only then that we can have real discussions about improving our dogs through selective breeding.
But because this candor eludes too many people who consider themselves dog people, we can’t have that conversation.
But for the sake of the dogs, we need to have that conversation.
It’s time to detach our egos from our dogs.
Levon Helm is from the Arkansas Delta, and Steve Earle, the writer of the song, is from Texas.
Neither is from a coal mining region.
However, Levon did play a coal miner in a movie.
I said in an earlier post that Miley caught a large fox squirrel a few weeks ago. She had it in her mouth, and it was squealing very loudly. She trots up to me with all the pride in the world. “I finally got one!” she seemed to say.
But that squirrel figured out how to get out of her mouth, and once he did, he put up a heck of a fight getting away. Golden retrievers very often don’t know how to kill, so this squirrel was able to take to the trees.
A fox squirrel, for those you who don’t know, is a huge tree squirrel that can weigh as much as 2 or 3 pounds.
When my grandpa was illegally ferreting, he send his ferret into a hollow tree where a fox squirrel had taken refuge. That squirrel sent the ferret packing!
