glenninindy
New member
There's a site aiming to build a large companion dog with the bone structure (not to scale) of an extinct dire wolf. Is it silly? Oh yeah. But I'm trying to place this on the continuum between BYB and top breeders.
Lurking for a few days, health testing, pedigrees, and having a goal are some of the qualities to look for in a breeder. They're building their own spec for a breed that doesn't exist, which seems like a whole lot of BS, but they have a long list of specific traits for body sizes and shapes, behavior, even the sound, so it's not them giving themselves carte blanche either. That's why I wanted to ask this sub. They DNA tested what looks like >50 dogs. They have a bit of a pedigree thing started in terms of publicly disclosing which dogs begat which other dogs, but not in the sense of those ancestors being exceptional exemplars of the breed, obviously.
I guess when this effort started in the late 80's they were calling it a Shepalute which is significantly less memey.
I'm a 0-time dog owner. Please don't urge me not to buy dogs wrong. I won't.
So is this good or bad? How are new breeds recognized officially? What's missing? Is it a matter of time so the breed identity is much more uniform as they get closer to their stated goals?
There's a horizon-spanning red flag where the site says they want to breed by God's Plan™. It's not leaving things to chance (maximum BYB), they're kind of just doing a really poor job of explaining that by breeding dogs more fit for modern families their dogs' "fitness" improves. Since survival of the fittest in the more savage sense is no longer a major factor (though longevity is a breed goal), the dogs are more "fit" if they can live happily as companion dogs that make their families happy. So by bungling both an evolutionary and a religious metaphor at the same time as a giant, unholy, mixed metaphor, they're just trying to say the breed's specific listed goals are meant to suit this larger goal of making a breed people will want.
Lurking for a few days, health testing, pedigrees, and having a goal are some of the qualities to look for in a breeder. They're building their own spec for a breed that doesn't exist, which seems like a whole lot of BS, but they have a long list of specific traits for body sizes and shapes, behavior, even the sound, so it's not them giving themselves carte blanche either. That's why I wanted to ask this sub. They DNA tested what looks like >50 dogs. They have a bit of a pedigree thing started in terms of publicly disclosing which dogs begat which other dogs, but not in the sense of those ancestors being exceptional exemplars of the breed, obviously.
I guess when this effort started in the late 80's they were calling it a Shepalute which is significantly less memey.
I'm a 0-time dog owner. Please don't urge me not to buy dogs wrong. I won't.
So is this good or bad? How are new breeds recognized officially? What's missing? Is it a matter of time so the breed identity is much more uniform as they get closer to their stated goals?
There's a horizon-spanning red flag where the site says they want to breed by God's Plan™. It's not leaving things to chance (maximum BYB), they're kind of just doing a really poor job of explaining that by breeding dogs more fit for modern families their dogs' "fitness" improves. Since survival of the fittest in the more savage sense is no longer a major factor (though longevity is a breed goal), the dogs are more "fit" if they can live happily as companion dogs that make their families happy. So by bungling both an evolutionary and a religious metaphor at the same time as a giant, unholy, mixed metaphor, they're just trying to say the breed's specific listed goals are meant to suit this larger goal of making a breed people will want.