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history
News: Guest Posts
Here at The Bark we have long promoted the theory that from the very start of our long relationship with dogs, they were our valuable partners. And, our evolutionary pathways most likely crossed along game trails rather than, as some contend, on ancient garbage mounds. Or as Mark Derr, our former science editor, and author of How the Dog Became the Dog, explained to us, “The premise I start with is that, in many ways, dogs are an evolutionary inevitability. As soon as humans and wolves encountered one another on the game trails, they struck up a relationship, and they’ve been at it ever since.”
Well, it looks like recent research into prehistoric Japanese graves proves, at least, that dogs were indeed our long-time hunting companions. In this fascinating study written by Angela Perri recently published a fascinating study that proves just this. This line of inquiry started when she was a grad student at Durham University in the UK. As David Grimm writes in Science:
“She wanted to get a sense of how dogs may have aided early humans in taking down game, so she did her best to approximate the activity: In 2011, she joined a group of Japanese businessmen on a wild boar hunt in a dense forest near Hiroshima. ‘It was terrifying,’ says Perri, now a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. ‘The boar sound like a train. They’re very aggressive, and they have big tusks. At any moment, one could come charging at you.’”
But the biggest takeaway she got was just how impressive the dogs were during this hunt. Not only did the 5 Bloodhounds and Shiba Inus help to track down the prey, but they also warned the humans when the boars were nearby.
That got Perri interested in investigating Japanese research papers for anything about dogs and the Jōmon culture—hunter-gatherers from 16,000 to 2,400 year ago. They lived in the northern islands with a cold climate filled with large terrestrial megafauna of the Pleistocene, like Naumann’s elephants and Yabe’s giant deer. But during the Holocene, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, there was a climatic warming displacing the larger animals with smaller, quicker ungulates like sika deer and wild boar. As Perri notes in the Antiquity paper, “This environmental shift … led to the creation of new exploitation niches for Jōmon foragers, including important variations in plant availability, coastal resources and terrestrial prey species.”
Perri’s research has involved studying dogs as “hunting technology,” and as she noted, “A hunting partnership between dogs and humans has long been postulated in the archaeological literature, with some researchers suggesting that such a collaborative alliance was the basis for the initial domestication of dogs. She points out that, “Dogs are an important, and in some cases indispensable, hunting aid for many modern forager groups, as they probably were for foragers in prehistory.” And explains that, “Injured deer often run, leading hunters on long chases, and wild boar can be aggressive and quickly learn to evade capture. Hunting dogs mitigate these factors by tracking blood trails, forcing game into vulnerable positions (e.g. in water) and holding prey until the hunter can make the final kill.”
Perri was familiar with the significance that dogs had with many ancient cultures, and how the ethnographic record has confirmed their importance and the revered status many of the dogs obtained, which often was displayed in the manner they were buried in “remarkably human-esque ways, often with grave goods and markers.”
She performed a comprehensive survey of Japanese archaeological literature, and found that the Honshu Jōmon did bury their canine hunting partners in shell middens, same as they did with humans. And found over 110 canine burials from 39 archaeological sites. “They were treating their dogs the same way they treated their human hunters.” And, “Like people, the dogs (which may have resembled Shiba Inus) were placed singly and appear to have been arranged in particular postures. ‘They looked like they curled up and went to sleep,’ Perri notes. Some had suffered what appeared to be hunting injuries—broken legs and teeth—and many of their bones had healed, suggesting people had taken care of them. Some were also found with grave goods, like shell bracelets and deer antlers.” Their ages ranged from newborn to over 12 years old. While the prehistoric puppies weren’t certainly valued as hunters, she noted that “the ethnographic record shows that puppies in hunter-gatherer groups are often valued for their potential as future hunting partners.”
Along with the burials themselves, Perri found that the “importance of hunting dogs in this region is also demonstrated by the numerous dog-shaped clay figures (dogu), including a set that features a dog barking at three wild boar.” Or, “One Yayoi representation of dogs is found on a ceremonial bronze bell (dotaku) depicting a number of scenes, one of which is a boar surrounded by a hunter and a pack of dogs.” As shown here:
A 2500-year-old bronze bell depicting a Jōmon hunt with dogs. Image courtesy of Tokyo National Museum (http://www.tnm.jp/)
Perri concludes that while dogs were an integral part of the ancestral forest hunting culture, once an agricultural subsistence culture took over, the dog burials stopped as well.
As Grimm noted in his article and quotting Melinda Zeder, an archaeozoologist at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, “it may be a disparity in loyalty. “Humans were a bit of a fair-weather friend—we were not as reliable as they were,” she laughs. “We could do to be a little more doglike.” We couldn’t agree with that sentiment more.
News: Guest Posts
Not surprisingly, a study published July 29, 2016 found that the English Bulldog no longer retains enough genetic diversity to correct life-threatening physical and genomic abnormalities. This means breeders cannot use the established population of purebred dogs to reverse the trend in extreme and painful exaggerations such as crippling dwarfism and respiratory deformities - traits that uninformed pet-owners find appealing.
In the early 1800s Bulldogs were trained for bull-baiting, a particularly cruel and vicious sport. In 1835 the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals convinced Parliament to enact the first animal cruelty law for the protection of domestic animals, including outlawing bull baiting.
As such, the Bulldog had outlived its usefulness. Like the pre-19th century Wolfhound that disappeared with the eradication of wolves in the British Isles, and the Tumbler whose demise was the invention of hunting firearms, the Bulldog was destined for extinction.
English Bulldog from 1890
But it was not to be. Beginning about 1840, the Victorian dog fancy's unabashed sentimentality was a catalyst for saving even the most formidable working breeds from their inevitable demise. Like many others, such as the Dachshund and Mastiff, Bulldogs went from working hard to hardly working.
Utility dogs were "refined" and transformed to fill jobs they weren't originally bred for - as show dogs and companions. Altered physical and behavior characteristics along with decreased levels of aggression were more compatible for their augmented duties as house pets.
English Bulldogs from 1920s
Beginning in the late 1890s, Bulldog breeders (and other breeders as well) selected small groups of genes from a diverse genome and created new breed-types. They were in effect increasing the odds that genetic anomalies would more likely be expressed to bring out exaggerated traits, like the Bulldog's baby-like face, corkscrew tail and affable personality.
As "desirable" aesthetic traits were selected for, other genetic variants including beneficial genes that contribute to overall health were eliminated from the gene pool, never to be reclaimed.
In the last few decades the most exaggerated traits in the Bulldog - the extreme brachycephalic skull and deformed skeleton- have become increasingly pronounced because naive consumers want that type of dog and consequently that's what many breeders select for.
Driven by economics, fashion, and uninformed decisions, breeders and buyers either ignore or are unaware of the genetic problems that have spread throughout the population.
The demise of the breed may not be a good thing for Bulldog-lovers, but it will thankfully put an end to the malformed and painfully crippled modern Bulldog we recognize today.
The good news is that some breeders are intent on bringing back the "Olde-Fashioned-Bulldogge".
Culture: Science & History
What can archeology tells us about the “connection” origins.
Studies of prehistoric dog burials have been making splashy headlines lately. Although the popular press would have us believe that these finds are proof of the affectionate relationship our ancestors had with dogs, the unifying theory that gives meaning to burial patterns remains elusive because ancient people left no written record.
What little we know about dogs’ social roles in antiquity is a patchy mosaic of information derived from physical analysis of bones excavated from gravesites. The accuracy of this mosaic has been further complicated by archaeologists’ long-standing difficulty with reliably distinguishing between wolves and dogs, not only because the two animals look similar, but also because changes in morphology during the early stages of domestication were subtle.
However, in 1986, zooarchaeologist Darcy Morey, now adjunct professor in anthropological sciences at Virginia’s Radford University, developed a statistical equation to more accurately identify dissimilarities between skulls. A decade later, geneticists were able to extricate even more conclusive information from DNA. Then, in a landmark paper published in 1999 in the Journal of Heredity, geneticists Carles Vilà, Jesus Maldonado and Robert Wayne suggested that the first domestication event occurred more than 100,000 years earlier than dog burial remains suggested. This marked the beginning of a decades-long trend that all but excluded archaeology and other academic disciplines from the equation.
Morey—and later, Greger Larson, evolutionary biologist in Durham University’s Department of Archaeology in the UK—challenged the exclusive use of DNA analysis to identify the time and place of the first domestication event. They advocated a return to a cross-discipline approach that included traditional archaeology, DNA analysis, isotope geochemistry and radiocarbon dating in the context of environmental sciences such as paleoclimatology and biogeography.
Robert Losey, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, is among the scholars who agree with this approach. “When the genetic information can be integrated with information on dogs’ diets, diseases, activity patterns and archaeological context, we get a much more complex and informative picture of people’s emotional and day-to-day lives with their animals than we can through genetics alone.”
Applied Forensics
Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the largest and oldest freshwater lake in the world, is known for its well-preserved Middle Holocene (3,000- to 9,000-year-old) hunter-gatherer cemeteries, which attract scientists studying how social and environmental pressures influence long-term cultural change. Leading a team of researchers from various disciplines, Losey analyzed numerous Lake Baikal sites containing human, dog and wolf remains dating back 5,000 to 8,000 years; the team’s findings were published in 2011 in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
As he explained, “What I tried to do in my study was to approach these dog skeletons just like we would a human skeleton. We applied a suite of analyses in order to tease out the interesting and relevant details of their lives. The best way to fully understand the domestication of dogs is to use as many forms of evidence as possible, and to employ a wide range of specialists.” Their interpretive model was partly based on ethnographic records of indigenous groups from across the northern hemisphere. For example, many northern people, who have an animistic understanding of their world, strongly believe that animals, plants and inanimate objects possess souls.
Using stable isotope analysis, researchers determined that dog and human diets were the same. In comparison, a wolf found buried in the same area had foraged on large game, a diet different than that of local people. Some dogs were buried with artifacts the dog would have used or been familiar with during its life: a decorative collar-like pendant made with red-deer teeth, a round ball-like stone, spoons, antlers and other implements.
Bone-wear suggested that the dogs had worked alongside people, likely as transport animals hauling heavy loads. Some had recovered from injuries that would have required special care. People and dogs were buried near one another in the same cemetery, and in some cases, were buried together (in one instance, a man was buried with two dogs, one on either side). Analysis of the dogs’ skeletons revealed a resemblance to modern-day Siberian Huskies, although they would have been larger. Genetic work on the specimens confirmed an ancestral link to our modern dogs.
According to Losey, “I think what we are really looking at is a set of relationships between people and dogs, and to study relationships, we need to try to understand the life histories of animals, not just their evolutionary history.”
Putting all of the small parts together, the researchers painted a big picture. They suggested that ancient indigenous people considered some dogs to be very special. Unlike the majority of simpler animals, whose spirits collectively recycled after death, these dogs were thought to be like humans, with powerful and unique souls that required mortuary rites similar to those of deceased people.
This special treatment was necessary for both dogs and humans so that their souls could return in new individuals. Losey added, “I think the act of treating a dog as a human upon its death indicates that people knew it had a soul, and that the mortuary rites it received were meant to ensure that this soul was properly cared for. These practices also clearly indicate that people had close emotional bonds with some of their dogs, and perhaps mourned their loss like they did [the loss of] their own family members.”
Waves of Proto-domestication
Although romanticized images of digs in the shadows of ancient civilizations continue to feed the popular notion of archaeology, a more accurate but less dramatic scene would have scientists in white lab coats conducting microscopic analyses of polymorphic nucleotides extracted from bone remnants stored for many decades on museum shelves. Indeed, bones unearthed long ago have proven to be quite revelatory. The most unexpected discoveries regarding the human/dog relationship are based on analyses of materials extracted from canid bones excavated, catalogued and archived in 1873 and 1884, respectively.
The oldest skull, which dates to 31,700 years ago, was found at Belgium’s Goyet Cave. Another from a site in Predmosti in the Czech Republic proved to be about 27,000 years old. One skull from the Predmosti site had a mammoth bone fragment in its mouth. Does it indicate that a special connection had developed between people and dogs as far back as 30,000 years ago? Archaeologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences—lead author of the two papers describing the 2008 and 2012 research results—said, “I believe that the dog skull with the bone between its teeth suggests some sort of ritual treatment. The position of the bone fragment in the mouth suggests that it was inserted between the incisors of the dog post-mortem.” The ethnographic record indicates that placing body parts between the teeth of dead carnivores was a common practice in many cultures. Exactly why remains open to speculation.
Paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman, who has written extensively on the evolutionary impact of the human/animal connection, suggested that the mammoth bone points to a cross-species alliance that may have developed even earlier—one that might account for the success of our early ancestors. She hypothesized that proto-dogs, like those found at the Predmosti site and at Goyet, cooperated with humans in a symbiotic hunting partnership that could account for the significant and abrupt increase in the number of animals found at mammoth kill-sites dating as far back as perhaps 45,000 years. The initial domestication of dogs may have been accidental, but once humans realized the value of these living “tools,” they began to refine them for increasingly specialized purposes.
In a separate study, a group of researchers led by Ole Thalmann examined ancient DNA of Eurasian dogs (the Predmosti dogs had not been genotyped) along with others, and came up with some surprising results. Separated by only a few thousand miles and a few thousand years, the ancient dogs were not related to each other, nor were they related to modern dogs. In addition, none of the lines survived, which suggests that domestication experienced many starts and stops in different regions with different wolf populations. Scientists speculated that the last ice age, which began about 26,000 years ago, might have contributed to this stutter-step process. They also found that living dogs are more closely related to ancient, extinct wolves than they are to modern wolves.
If domestic dogs somehow catastrophically died out, would we have the natural resources needed to recreate them? In Shipman’s opinion, “The answer is both no and yes. If dogs disappeared, they probably couldn’t re-evolve from the wolves we have now. But those extinct wolves evolved into contemporary wolves, and canids in general have a huge amount of variability in their genomes, which is why we have so many different types of dogs today. If by ‘dogs,’ you mean a highly variable canid that can live with and cooperate with humans, then I think the answer is yes. Would it be the same dog as today? We can’t be sure.”
Laid to Rest with Care
In the past two decades, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of about 1,400 dogs buried 2,500 years ago on prime ocean-view real estate in ancient Ashkelon, today a thriving city located on the Mediterranean Sea, 30 minutes from Tel Aviv. The dog burials spanned a period of eight decades. Carefully positioned alone in shallow pits, the dogs’ bodies were placed on their sides, legs flexed, tails gently tucked around their hind legs. Ranging in age from newborn through elderly, they appear to have died of natural causes.
Ashkelon is only one of thousands of ancient dog-burial sites scattered across the globe, and its large number of burials raises the question, “How many dogs were buried in antiquity?” The answer is, “We’ll never know.” Throughout prehistory, people mostly disposed of bodies, human and non-human, in untraceable ways; they sent them floating down rivers or buried them in shallow earthen graves—reverent practices that lost them to the ages.
In addition, dog burials were so common that they are field sites’ most overlooked artifacts. In her 2009 manual, A Practical Guide to In Situ Dog Remains for the Field Archaeologist, Susan Crockford, adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in Canada who has worked with dog remains for more than 20 years, maintains that far more dog burials are encountered than are ever mentioned in archaeological site reports. Workers aren’t properly trained to recognize dog remains, nor do most understand the history of dogs and their significant contribution to the human story. Consequently, much of what we could have learned about the human/dog connection has been lost forever.
Furthermore, scientists can’t develop statistical estimations because it’s unclear whether or not dog burials are representative of the total dog population. However, by calculating the timing of genetic bottlenecks, Thalmann and his colleagues suggested that ancient dog populations paralleled the trajectory of human population growth. Dog numbers increased steadily until about 5,000 years ago, then abruptly declined, followed by a sharp increase 2,500 years later. Even if their calculations are proven accurate, whether (and why) certain dogs were selected for burial while others were not remains unclear.
The first comprehensive review of dog burial studies, “Burying key evidence: the social bond between dogs and people,” by Darcy Morey, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2006), put the documented cases and site locations in perspective. Written for a scholarly audience but with enough humanity to appeal to lay readers, the paper brought new attention to a topic of inherently widespread interest. Given that so many burials are untraceable and others are uncertain, why even suggest a total?
Professor Morey said, “Depending on circumstances, for a given site, I think it’s possible to suggest how many were buried, at least in that place.” In a later book, Dogs: Domestication and the Development of a Social Bond, Morey included an appendix that inventoried dog burials, including totals as known from specific places. “But,” he added, “given frequent uncertainties, I think in general that suggesting combined totals is fraught with problems.”
Together Forever
As companions and helpers, dogs hold a special place in our hearts, and increasingly, as our equals in relation to our place in the collective physical world. Mary Elizabeth Thurston, author of The Lost History of the Canine Race, anthropologist and historian for Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester, N.Y., said, “Fifteen years ago, about 55 percent of the public believed pets deserve mortuary rites in death. Today, the number is much higher.”
Thurston also noted an uptick in the number of people who wanted to be laid to rest with their animal companion, either by arranging for their own cremated remains to be buried with the pet, or for the cremated remains of that animal to be interred with them. “When animals fill an innate need for companionship as either surrogate children or life partners, they become truly indispensible in the eyes of their human caretakers. The desire to be together is understandable. The grief felt at the death of that pet is profound, and people want to accord their animals a measure of respectful remembrance in death, just as [they] would any other family member. However, we can’t assume that ancient people, who left no written records, held our same modern sensibilities.”
Canine remains in ancient human burial pits more often indicate that the dog was part of an offering, sacrifice or spiritual ritual rather than a companion. Thurston suggested that the ancient interment of single animals with grave goods, especially things that the dog used in life, along with evidence that shows the dog died of natural causes, might suggest an affectionate relationship and the belief that the animal had a soul—that, like people, it would need these things on the “other side” for a good life.”
In “Peru’s Mummy Dogs,” writer Roger Atwood noted that in 2006, Sonia Guillén, archaeologist at the Maliqui Center in Ilo, Peru, reported that her team had discovered 40 dogs buried about 1,000 years ago in separate plots alongside the remains of what were probably their owners. The discovery was unusual in that the dogs were interred with items that look like toys and food. As Guillén, who studies Peru’s Chiribaya culture (which pre-dated the Incas), told the press, “We have found that in all the cemeteries, always, in between the human tombs, there are others dedicated to the dogs, full-grown and puppies. They have their own graves, and in some cases they are buried with blankets and food.” Guillén, who suspects that the dogs may be direct ancestors of the companion and working dogs who populate the village today, is collecting DNA for future study.
Most human/dog burials occurred 5,000 to 8,000 years ago in hunter-gatherer societies and disappeared with the beginning of the agrarian era. But their absence doesn’t equate to a lack of an affectionate human/dog connection. At the Lake Baikal site, when pastoralists inhabited the area beginning about 5,000 years ago, they did not bury dogs, at least not in areas where archaeologists might find them. According to Robert Losey, “The difference between the pastoralists and the hunter-gatherers living in this area of Siberia is that the hunter-gatherers buried some of their dogs in cemeteries used otherwise for the human dead. The pastoralists do not appear to have done this.
“Over the past few years, my colleagues and I have interviewed local Buryat people, who are descended from some of these early pastoralists, about their dogs, and they clearly have a deep respect for [them], and do bury some of them. However, they are not considered non-human persons with individual souls, and in the local belief systems, are not spiritually equivalent with humans. So, they cannot be buried in local cemeteries. The best dogs, and the most loved ones, are given burial rites in some cases, but these tend to be elsewhere—on the tops of hills or mountains, for example. Some folks even recounted that they left pieces of meat in the graves with the dogs—food for them in the afterlife.”
As long as dogs have existed, they have been deliberately buried in every region they inhabited. Moreover, dogs have been buried more often than any other animal: singly, with other dogs, near people and with people. This ancient practice was a global phenomenon, one that crossed nearly all cultural boundaries. Precisely why dogs were buried may never be clearly understood, but the universality of the practice suggests it may be embedded in the human psyche and accordingly, is a fundamental part of the human/dog connection.
For in-depth information on sources cited click here.
Dog's Life: Work of Dogs
Guest Editorial
In New York City on June 11, 1928, Morris Frank took one big step for the disabled and one giant leap for assistance dogs. The 20-year-old Tennessean, who lost his sight at 16, was fresh off the SS Tuscania after a month in Switzerland, where he had been trained by Dorothy Eustis to work with his first guide dog, a female German Shepherd named Buddy. A group of curious, incredulous reporters greeted him at the dock, demanding to know what exactly this dog could do for him.
The previous month had bolstered Frank’s native Southern swagger, and he boasted that Buddy could take him anywhere. “Even across West Street?” they asked. Known locally as “Death Avenue,” it was one of the city’s most hazardous thoroughfares. Frank reportedly declared, “Show me to it, brother, and Buddy will take me across it.”
Making good on his claim, the pair began to negotiate the wide cobblestone street against a backdrop of clopping hooves, blaring horns, screeching brakes and the clamor of commerce. Buddy led her tall, blind master in his well-cut suit safely across to the opposite curb.
This was the first time Americans had seen a guide dog in action, but certainly not the last. Frank and Eustis went on to create The Seeing Eye six months later, and before long, people assisted by dogs became part of daily life.
Before I became a guide dog mobility instructor, I had no real idea what guide dogs did, much less how they did it. After eleven years of training service dogs for the blind, however, I can give you some highlights of the amazing feats these dogs do every day for their people.
Most of us know that dogs have a sensational sense of smell; the difference between their olfactory ability and ours is so huge that we can’t really comprehend it. But to me, one of the most astonishing things about guide dogs is that they are asked to constrain this quintessential faculty. They can’t wander nose to the ground, following an invisible trail this way and that. Doing their jobs requires them to override a very powerful and innate inclination.
Dogs are also adept at social intelligence; they “read” us really well. Guide dogs put this skill to use every moment they’re on duty, responding appropriately to the variety of gestures and verbal commands a blind person uses when working with a dog, including directional cues like “forward,” “left” and “right.”
We expect them to obey these commands and generally, they do. But sometimes, they’re required to make an independent assessment of a situation, and to intelligently disobey if complying would put their person in danger. For example, if there’s an open manhole cover in our path, we want them to ignore the “forward” command. Same goes for subway platforms, tight spaces and, most importantly, traffic passing in front of us as we’re about to cross the street.
Guide dogs put their memories to work as well, recalling not just the place they last saw a squirrel or a cat under a bush (both of which they’re trained to ignore), but also, their person’s bank, grocery store and favorite coffee shop. And, of course, they remember the home they share with their person. That’s particularly helpful if the individual loses his or her sense of direction.
So, back to 1928. Imagine you’re Buddy. As you begin to cross, you encounter a kaleidoscope of activity; the pungent smells of rotting produce, horse manure, and oil and gas from ships and automobiles; and the constant din of horses and cars and trolleys. To the astonishment of those watching, you safely take Morris Frank through this hurly burly to the other side of the street. It’s nothing short of a miracle.
Modern-day guide dogs accomplish this miracle, and many more, every day. But what seems phenomenal to us is run-of-the-mill for them. Fortunately, the capacities and senses with which they’ve been endowed can, with appropriate training, be harnessed to guide humans. It’s one of the most mutually beneficial partnerships ever conceived.
You can play a part in these “everyday miracles” by donating money or time to the organization of your choice. Whether you’re writing a check or raising a puppy, you’re helping to enhance the independence and dignity of the blind and visually impaired through these remarkable partnerships.
Culture: Science & History
How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
Pat Shipman, PhD, is a retired adjunct professor of anthropology at Penn State and an internationally recognized expert in taphonomy, the study of how living animals are transformed into skeletons, and then fossils. Her scientific training and boundless curiosity lead her to take on the intriguing question of just why Homo neaderthalensis, one of the most successful apex species of hunters who had thrived for millennium in Eurasia, would almost suddenly, anthropologically speaking, become extinct. Her hypothesis: The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction (The Belknap Press) points to the abilities of both certain wolves and our ancestors to pair up and this gave them the competitive edge in the battle of survival. It is certainly true that this wasn’t done intentionally, but such an evolutionary breakthrough resulted in an alliance that had devastating effects on not just the Neanderthals but on a long species list including the huge woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tigers and Cave bears. Could it be possible “man’s best friend” have been the Neanderthals’ worst nightmare ? Shipman’s thesis starts with Homo sapiens, who in expanding north out of Africa were not only as an invasive species, but the most invasive in history, wreaking ecologically enormous changes throughout continents. The evidence that she relies on, by a meticulous review of the most current archeological research and genomic and genetic studies, can perhaps most readily be seen in the mammoth remains megasites, where the number of kills increases almost exponentially after the first evidence of the wolf-dog–human alliance was discovered. For ten thousand years before the domestication of the wolf-dog, evidence of early humans hunting mega-fauna like mammoth is scant, but with the addition of the superior hunting and tracking talents that wolf-dogs contributed to our projectile throwing ancestors lead not only to more successful kills of large prey but insured the success of our two predatory species. As for the Neanderthal, it wasn’t just simply that humans bested them as hunters but climate change was also a key contributing factor: but the combo of the alliance of the apex predators with the ice age ensured their extinction, so goes evolution. As Shipman notes about the Jagger Principle, “… the immortal words of Mick Jagger (yes that one) and Keith Richards are the best statement I know of to describe evolution. Things don’t stay the same; you can’t always get what you want; but with a little flexibility, you might get what you need to survive.” This is truly a fascinating and thought-provoking book, and Shipman presents a compelling argument for how canines and humans proved their flexibility and how this could have been the main reason that we survived and the Neanderthals didn’t. But drawing upon the wisdom of another ’60s duo, we also got by with a little help from our [first] friends. See the following interview with Dr. Shipman to learn more.
Bark: How long did it take humans, once they migrated out of Africa, to team up with wolves, a species that was unknown in Africa?
Pat Shipman: There were wolves in North Africa, but my guess is that humans did not team up with them but rather, based on genetic information, with European wolves. The earliest humans in Europe date to perhaps 42,000 years ago. The earliest wolf-dogs we know at present show up about 34,000 years ago (or about 37,000, if the raw radiocarbon date is calibrated for irregularity in the deterioration of C-14). Thus, it may have taken 6,000 years, or less—I seriously doubt we have found the first wolf anyone ever attempted to domesticate.
BK: What environmental reasons led to this amazing partnership?
PS: There were many different predators in Europe when modern humans arrived; competition for prey was considerable, and even worse once humans came on the scene. The idea of domesticating any animal was completely unknown, but somehow— probably by accident—some wolves began cooperating with some humans because the alliance benefited both.
They caught more prey, faster, with less risk to canine or human, which meant more energy for reproduction. Wolves had a set of skills for hunting in packs: speed, keen ears, a very keen sense of smell, sharp teeth and claws. Early humans were much slower, had lousy senses of smell and hearing, and blunt teeth, but they had distance weapons that could kill an animal while avoiding injury from close contact. By teaming up with special wolves—wolfdogs they could capture a much wider array of animals with much less risk and less expenditure of energy. They were nearly unstoppable.
BK: You write that proto-dogs were like “living tools” to humans. Was this a mutually beneficial arrangement?
PS: Absolutely. You cannot force any animal to cooperate if it does not want to. You cannot force an animal not to be hostile to humans or to cooperate with humans if there is no benefit to the animal.
BK: Wolves are highly territorial, and may kill other wolves who come into their area. Since this was well before human settlements, humans and wolf-dogs would have traveled great distances, through other species’ (i.e., wolves’) territory. Could the advantage to the wolfdogs come from the protection offered by their human partners?
PS: Both wolf-dogs and humans were more efficient hunters through cooperation— the wolf-dogs by having hunters kill the prey from a distance after they had found it, isolated it and stressed it through charging and holding it at bay.
For wolf-dogs and humans to travel together, they must have cooperated to drive off or kill the wolf packs through whose territories they passed. Indeed, there is a marked rise in the number of wolf bones in human sites after wolf-dogs appear. I think wolves were deliberately targeted by humans in order to protect the wolf-dogs, and to protect the remains of their kills from scavengers.
BK: Why do you think that Neanderthals did not also have wolf-dogs?
PS: One quite real possibility is that modern humans had adaptations that fostered better communication with wolf-dogs and possibly (we don’t know) Neanderthals did not. For example, humans are the only primates with whites to their eyes, which makes communicating the “direction of gaze”— where you are looking—very obvious. This is a huge advantage in silent cooperative hunting. We do not yet know if Neanderthals had this adaptation or not. Assuming that they saw humans working with wolf-dogs, why Neanderthals did not steal them or make their own is unclear. Humans undoubtedly prized the canines and may have gone to great lengths to prevent them from being stolen. Maybe Neanderthals did not have the empathy and ability to understand wolf-dogs that is so necessary to a good working relationship. Maybe Neanderthals tried and just couldn’t figure out how to handle them.
BK: What do you think inspired humans to see that teaming up with wolves might give them a competitive edge? Did it have to do with their diet perhaps?
PS: I don’t think humans set out to domesticate wolves into dogs; I think it was an accident based on taking in orphaned puppies and raising them. Before working with wolf-dogs, humans were rarely able to kill mammoths or other very large game; afterward, there are sites with dozens of mammoth kills. I suspect that killing mammoths efficiently and regularly required the help of wolf-dogs, so mammoths weren’t really a preferred human food until humans had wolfdogs to help.
BK: It was interesting that the primary protein source in the bones of both wolfdogs and humans can be detected. What does that tell us?
PS: First, this sort of study tells us that, at the same site, wolf-dogs and wolves ate different prey animals predominantly. (That is a very surprising finding if my colleagues and I are mistaken and the wolf-dogs are really wolves, that would make them a very odd and distinctive group.) Second, this type of study shows us that humans may have provisioned wolf-dogs, rather than letting them simply eat whatever was left over.
BK: You say that wolf-dogs were a first, but unsuccessful, attempt at domestication; and that domestication happened several times in different areas. Are you concerned that their mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) evidence hasn’t been found in modern-day canids?
PS: Not at all. There is as much mtDNA evidence that these identified wolf-dogs were wolves as there is that they were dogs: none. The mtDNA we have so far from wolf-dogs is unique, previously unknown. What that means is uncertain.
This particular genetic material is passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter and so on; the father’s mtDNA is not. This means that if you have a small population with an unusual mtDNA, the probability that it will go extinct in 1,000 years—much less 35,000—is very, very, very high.
It could be as simple as a few females who don’t reproduce successfully or have only males due to random chance. Also, athough we have several thousand mtDNA lineages from living animals, there are millions of dogs and wolves whose mtDNA is unknown. Maybe the sample sizes of living animals are too small and the wolf-dog mtDNA is still out there somewhere. Maybe it is simply extinct.
The standard calculation is that 99 percent of all mtDNA lineages go extinct, so we can’t conclude too much from that. I am not at all worried that the mtDNA information from wolfdogs has not yet been matched in any other group. Also, the entire wolf-dog group may well have gone extinct, with a still-later domestication of wolves into dogs. We just don’t know.
News: Editors
Auction of Classic Painting Benefits Dogs
The painting depicts a boy and his dog in a style that has become known as American Regionalism. It is signed “Benton” for Thomas Hart Benton, the movement’s greatest practitioner, best known for his murals embracing the populist idealism of pre-war America. On this painting’s reverse side is inscribed “For T.P.’s birthday/11 years old/From Dad.” The subjects are the artist’s son T.P. and Jake, the family dog.
Last evening (November 18) the painting was one of more than 500 works from the A. Alfred Taubman collection auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York. T.P. and Jake was painted in 1938 and was estimated to fetch between $1.5M and $2.5M. After a flurry of bidding, it sold for $3,130,000. It was accompanied by the following notes in the auction catalog that included touching words by the artist describing the deep bond shared by his young son and his dog. Appropriately, the sale of this painting benefited the Sam Simon Charitable Giving Foundation, dedicated to saving the lives of dogs.
The present work depicts the artist’s son T.P. Benton and his beloved dog, Jake. T.P. was eight years old when his mother, Rita, found Jake on a farm west of Kansas City, Missouri. The Bentons adopted him as their family pet and he became particularly devoted to T.P. When Jake died in 1946 Thomas Hart Benton wrote an obituary for the dog, which appeared in the Vineyard Gazette and The Kansas City Times. In one passage Benton recalls an event which illustrates Jake’s special affection for T.P.:
“After three years had passed Rita took T.P. to Italy to visit her mother. This was a sad time for Jake. Up to now he’s given me little attention. Rita fed him and T.P. played with him. Of what use I might be he had little need to consider. I was just there, good enough to shake hands with occasionally but not important. Now, however, he clung to me and I took him with me on a long roundabout tour of the South which ended, after seven weeks, at the docks in New York were we met the boat returning his real master and mistress.”
“There was a high rail fence between the passageway for debarking passengers and the people who had come to meet them. I stood by this fence trying to catch a glimpse of Rita and T.P. in the crowd of voyagers. But Jake beat me to it. The chain leash in my hand twisted suddenly and before I knew it Jake’s full grown seventy pounds of muscle and tawny hair was soaring over the fence.”
“No one who saw the meeting of the boy and dog could ever forget it. The travelers and those who met them stood aside to watch the play of Jake’s ecstasy. They forgot their own emotions in this more intense one of a devoted animal. His yaps of joy sailed up over the arching girders to the high roofs of the dock and came back to pierce your heart. This was the high point of life and those who saw recognized it.” (The Kansas City Times, p. vi).
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
Everybody left these transmitters alone
Over the winter break, my family visited the Washington D.C. area, and like my children, I find myself writing the “What I Did During My Vacation” essay. At the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the great displays include the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Enola Gay, a Concorde airliner, and the 1903 Wright Flyer that was the first plane ever to take flight. Despite these historical marvels, the item I remember most from our hours in the museum was much smaller and far less impressive in appearance.
I’m referring to a military transmitter that was used successfully during the Vietnam War to help soldiers in need of rescue, to help pilots determine where to deliver military strikes and to monitor activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This homing device is officially known as the T-1151 Radio Transmitter, but was more commonly called the Doo Radio Transmitter. Many of them looked like dog feces, although others resembled feces from animals that were native to the area such as monkeys.
The genius of this piece of military equipment is that because it was disguised as feces, nobody was likely to mess with it. It could be put in place even weeks before a mission and remain undisturbed. They lasted as long as the battery power allowed, with discovery being an unlikely reason for them to cease being operational.
I never knew dog poop served such an important function—making the camouflage of military equipment possible.
Culture: Science & History
Ancient Sanskrit Myth
Just as scientific research is confirming that, indeed, the canine/human friendship goes back many millennia, it’s a good time to look at what the ancients have to say about the subject. For example, take the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit masterwork thought to be the longest-ever epic poem. Not only is it 1.8 million words, it’s also one of the oldest, with origins in the 8th century BCE.
It has been likened, by many experts, to be a combination of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” the Bible, King Arthur’s tales—it is also the only one that begins with a dog and ends with one, as noted below. The part of the poem that got our attention tells how loyalty to a dog opened a pathway to heaven for the epic’s hero, King Yudhishthira. Toward the saga’s end, the king renounces his throne and, with his wife and four brothers, sets off on a final pilgrimage across India to reach heaven in the Himalayas. Along the way, Svana, a stray dog, joins the group.
During the journey, the king’s brothers and his wife die. Finally, Yudhishthira, with the dog at his side, nears his destination. Heaven’s gatekeeper and king of the gods, Indra, arrives in a golden chariot and invites Yudhishthira to pass into heaven. But when Yudhishthira asks Indra if Svana may accompany him, Indra tells him that dogs are not allowed.
Yudhishthira then says, “Lord Indra, Svana has given his heart to me. I cannot leave him. Rather than reject him, I will reject heaven and remain here with my dog.” Indra replies, “Your words prove that you truly are worthy of a place in heaven. Come in, and your dog is welcome, too.” At that moment, the dog is transformed into Dharma, the god of righteousness and the father of Yudhishthira! The king had passed the test Indra put to him, confirming his worthiness and achieving his reward through his fidelity to his dog.
This Hindu lesson is remarkable for many reasons, but foremost because it speaks to the loyalty we owe to the most loyal of our companions.
Dog's Life: Lifestyle
Those little pests are nothing new!
Mummified dogs are not a new archaeological discovery, but finding bloodsucking parasites on them is. Over 400 dog mummies unearthed from the El Deir excavation site in Egypt have been found, and one young dog among them was infested with a number of parasites that have been preserved.
There were over 60 ticks found on this poor dog and there was one louse, too. The scientists who found this dog suspect that a tick-born disease that kills red blood cells was probably responsible for the death of this dog at such a young age. Besides the ticks and the louse, remains of two types of fly larvae were found on it, suggesting that the dog’s body had time to attract carrion flies prior to being mummified.
Mummifying animals was common in ancient Egypt. It was done to provide food and companionship for people in the afterlife and to make sacrifices to the gods, yet nobody is sure of the reasons for the dog mummies at El Deir. It is unclear if they had specific human guardians or how they died. Perhaps they were purposely bred to be sacrificed as cats commonly were, but we just don’t know.
Scientists involved with this excavating project are exploring questions about the source of the dogs. They are also hoping to find more parasites on the dog mummies in order to investigate the origin and spread of diseases and to deepen our understanding of the role of parasites in the history of the species.
Evidence that ancient dogs suffered from ticks, lice and other ectoparasites is prevalent in ancient writings such as those of Aristotle, Homer and Pliny the Elder, but this is the first archaeological evidence that corroborates those texts. It’s certainly no surprise that dogs living a couple of thousand years ago faced the danger and nuisance of ticks and lice. It would be astounding if it were a recent development in the lives of canids, but it’s still interesting to have such concrete evidence.
Culture: Science & History
Breeders, judges and historians talk about breed standards—why they work and when they don’t
In the world of mammals, the domestic dog— Canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of the gray wolf— reigns as the most morphologically diverse. Consider, for example, the extremes represented by the 155- pound South Russian Ovcharka and the seven-pound Silky Terrier. This incredible variety can be attributed in part to the dog’s basic template, which can be customized by the manipulation of a very small number of genes.
For instance, 95 percent of all five canine fur textures and lengths (the Afghan Hound and Curly-Coated Retriever curiously excepted) is orchestrated by three genes. Further, just six or seven locations in the canine genome account for nearly 80 percent of dogs’ vast size and weight differences. (In humans, these genes number in the hundreds, if not thousands). A single mutation, shared by 14 diminutive breeds, determines that a dog will be small, and another is responsible for the long-bodied, short-legged nature of numerous dwarf breeds.
Clearly, the dog’s random morphology isn’t quite as arbitrary as we thought, and breeds aren’t quite as unique. Furthermore, canine traits come in packages. Flip a switch to make the legs more slender, and the skull will narrow as well. Turn down the volume on pigment and the chance of deafness increases.
Those who bred dogs had long known that traits were related, but there was little understanding of how those relationships worked; nor was there much concern. Dogs were bred for skills useful in a practical world. Once breed exhibition became a fashionable pastime and working dogs were awarded championships based strictly on appearance, however, all this changed.
In 1866, John Henry Walsh (writing under the pseudonym “Stonehenge”), editor of The Field, the most influential hunting and kennel journal in England, was the first to describe a breed’s physical characteristics with phrases that he believed were equivalent to its field ability. A bird dog judged perfect to a well-written breed standard would, by the logic of the day, perform perfectly in the field.
At the time, horsemen and sportsmen were the dog-fancy glitterati (women became active later), and many of the arcane descriptions in breed standards are borrowed from those arenas. For example, the Poodle’s “straight-forward springy trot” describes the dog’s ability to retrieve and carry a bird. The phrase “stand like a cleverly made hunter” references ideal anatomical construction and proportion in the German Shorthaired Pointer.
Today, breed standards serve three purposes: assessment in competition; delineation of unique qualities in different breeds, some very much alike; and maintenance of breed similarity throughout the world.
The question is, what happens to purebred dogs when language, intrinsically fluid and inexact, is used to suspend change in morphology and behavior? In the late 1990s, as a doctoral student in linguistics at Claremont Graduate University, I conducted a study to find out. Part of the research included interviews with experienced American Kennel Club (AKC) breeders, specialty judges and breed historians. What I heard from them provides some insight into specific ways that a standardized lexicon can influence change in pedigreed dogs far beyond what is intended.
Dogs in Translation For some breeds, international politics played a role. At the first Canine Congress in 1886, the Germans were opposed to the Swiss-type Saint Bernard, favoring the bulkier English type. Nothing was resolved until 1887, when the Swiss dog was finally approved as the international type. The United States club, with its strong ties to England, adopted the international standard in words, but in practice, bred to the English type.
During an interview, as three Saints gnawed on bones nearby, an experienced breeder and specialty judge offered his opinion: “This changed the morphology of the American Saint, most noticeably in the head. The Saint Bernard standard was translated, with some errors, from German to English in 1888. For instance, ‘when in action’ should have read ‘when excited or alert.’ The phrase, ‘the horizontal axis of the head’ should have read ‘the long axis of the head.’” More than a century later, the club had still not made corrections, perhaps because, as linguists argue, translation of a lexicon from one language to another can never be exact.
Translations are more like corrections or clarifications. When standards are clarified, they usually get longer and, consequently, more exclusive. A standard that calls for feet to be “round, compact, catlike, standing well upon the toe pads,” is more restrictive than one that says feet must be “close, round and firm.” Revisionists tread cautiously because an imprecisely rephrased standard can have an impact on a breed’s genetic diversity.
Amending a standard for any reason is controversial for those entrenched in a time-honored tradition devoted to blueblood history (albeit a fanciful history, since geneticists tell us that very few breeds are as old as they were once touted). As one Greyhound breeder observed, “The torch handed to us was the perfect coursing dog. Our standard is taken word for word from what Stonehenge wrote in the 1860s. If we added more words to make it more explicit, it may end up being a Greyhound different than the one each one of us has in our head.”
But progress necessitates change. A handful of words differentiate an apple, an orange or a pear, but 13 varieties of apples require a larger lexicon. In his 1576 treatise, Of Englishe Dogges: The Diversities, the Names, the Natures, and the Properties, cynologist John Caius described the generic land Spaniel in 58 words: “The most part of their skins are white and if they be marked with any spots, they are commonly red, and somewhat great therewithal, the hairs not growing in such thickness but that the mixture of them may easily be perceived. Other some of them be reddish and blackish, but of that sort there be but a few.” Today, Caius’s dog has morphed into 13 f lushing Spaniel breeds. The Field Spaniel standard uses 973 words, short in comparison to the English Springer Spaniel standard, a 2,040 word descriptor.
Occasionally, words are added to explain what something is not. As one breed standard committee member noted, “There were lots of questions from judges about the preferred shape of the eye opening. So we said it’s acceptable as long as it’s not this, that or the other thing.” And at a California dog show, pointing to Mastiffs benched only a few feet from his St. Bernards, an exhibitor told me, “Sometimes breed clubs have to lengthen standards to differentiate their breeds from others so similar that, if marked differently, could be shown as Saints.”
When Words Fail Dressed in formal attire appropriate for the straitlaced Madison Avenue cocktail party that precedes every Westminster dog show, AKC VIPs sipped their drinks and talked candidly about breed standards.
A Doberman breeder, specialty and all-breed judge opined, “I’m not sure that the standard hasn’t been what’s wrong with some of the breeds, in that by naming and describing the criteria with which the animal is to be judged, the words lack exactness. When people bred to the standard, the animal changed and became what the words described. Also, some groups wrote the standard and have not been able to breed to that ideal, so now, they change the nuance of the words to fit the breed ideal. Making the dogs fit the words, and not vice-versa, is wrong.”
For instance, a standard that establishes criteria to develop the best muzzle shouldn’t include terms that are subjective or indefinite. Or as one judge said, “If the standard calls for a short muzzle, judges select dogs based on the shortest muzzles in the ring. The breed’s muzzle gets shorter and shorter. So you have to ask, ‘Shorter than what?’”
Another said, “Our standard calls for the ear, when pulled forward, to reach the eye. You see so many dogs in the ring now with longer ears. We always say, well, which eye is it supposed to reach, and is it pulled under the muzzle or over it? I have never seen a Golden Retriever with ears too short.”
Some breeders get so fixated on one attribute of the traditional standard that they are willing to sacrifice something more important. “For example, they may create a broad head but are willing to accept shorter legs and a longer back in order to do so,” another judge observed.
Breed standards, like all nomenclature, are subject to the rules of language. Like the dog it describes, vocabulary is deceptively capricious and unexpectedly fluid. A good example is size. Big breeds are getting bigger. As I was told by a breed historian in reference to St. Bernards, “What was bred to be powerful and strong in 1900 would not be considered powerful and strong today. Like an automobile in 1915, it was powerful then but not compared to now.” If a standard describes a breed as strong and powerful, the ideal dog gets bigger.
Rather than hack away at standards, some breed clubs hold seminars for judges in which contemporary nuances of an indefinite vocabulary are refined. Others reluctantly reword phrases to accommodate inexperienced newcomers (currently, the average length of interest and activity in the dog fancy is five years or less). A Golden Retriever breeder told me, “People who wrote the original standard were horse people, and this is where the phrase, ‘deep through the heart’ came from. It had two meanings, deep through the chest and courageous. The original meaning and nuance of the old words is often lost on today’s breeders, or is interpreted to mean something else.” After years of debate, the phrase was reluctantly changed to “deep through the chest.” Some clubs don’t revise words, but instead, reinterpret their meanings. Take English Bulldogs, for example. As an owner of one of these stocky dogs remarked, “The interpretation of words has changed. The Victorian [Bull]dog was a transition dog, less bulky, less massive, taller, leaner, and is now thicker and more compact.” Another handler observed that “one of the issues in the standard is weight. It calls for 45 to 50 pounds. But it has no height restriction, so a higher-station dog might be thinner.” The 1910 dog was a much taller and leaner dog compared to today’s stout fireplug variety, but both are considered to have been bred correctly to the standard.
A German Shepherd breeder and specialty judge who chairs the club’s standard committee told me that “you can have the same words in several standards, but they don’t mean the same thing. We use the word ‘almondshaped’ in our standard. But if you look at other breed standards, both the Collie and American Cocker call for almond-shaped eyes. The Collie has a small triangular eye and the Cocker’s is a goggle-eye [the eye protrudes from the skull].”
Judges Play a Role A specialty judge is an experienced breeder and expert on a particular breed. An all-breed judge is a generalist qualified to judge several breeds. The specialty judge brings meaning to the words in the standard, and the allbreed judge makes sure the words mean what they say.
A specialty judge who also works as an all-breed judge explained that the interpretation of complex descriptions, such as the angle of the hock, is more difficult for a generalist all-breed judge to measure. “Because it’s easier to see a proper bite than a proper angulation, the bite may be given more significance than something more important, such as angulation of the hindquarters.” On the other hand, the all-breed judge tests the words. “If the breed club thinks the all-breed judge is misinterpreting the standard, then they need to rewrite it. The judge shouldn’t choose the dog that he thinks they mean.”
War of Words The AKC considers itself a club of clubs. Owners intent on breed registration must first demonstrate that a majority of breeders are interested in establishing a national breed club. Who gets to be in that club is at the heart of a mounting number of controversies.
In 1994, the AKC Labrador Retriever standard was revised to exclude dogs less than 22 inches at the withers (or 21 inches for bitches). Some breeders whose dogs no longer met the standard were part of an $11 million class-action suit against the AKC Labrador Retriever Parent Club (the national organization designated by AKC to represent the breed), claiming that height restrictions excluding shorter dogs no longer described the Labrador Retriever: if you make a bigger dog, you make a different dog. A litigant told me, “It’s perfectly reasonable to change a breed, but the dog should have a different name.” They tried and failed to trademark the name Labrador Retriever; the judge sided with the AKC parent club. The Border Collie war began in 1988, when the American Border Collie Association and others heard rumblings that some wanted to register the breed for conformation showing, which requires a breed standard. This idea didn’t go over well with herding trial enthusiasts; a Border Collie is what it does, not what it looks like. Any dog can enter an open sheepdog trial. There are no age, size, color, shape or breed restrictions, and registration is not required. Unlike registered purebreds, whose lineage must be proven in ancient studbooks, many Border Collie champions are registered on merit (ROM). In theory, a Pomeranian who could prove its worth at a sheepdog trial could, by performance, be called a Border Collie.
In the minds of many, AKC conformation specifications threatened 200 years of breeding for performance, not looks. Led by Donald McCaig, who retold the tale in his book The Dog Wars (2007, Outrun Press), the group prepared for battle: “Hands off the Border Collie! We own Border Collies. Our dogs are companion dogs, obedience dogs and livestock-herding dogs. For hundreds of years, Border Collies have been bred to strict performance standards and today they’re the soundest, most trainable dogs in the world. The AKC wants to push them out of the Miscellaneous Class and into the show ring. They seek a conformation standard [appearance standard] for the breed. We, the officers of every single legitimate national, regional and state Border Collie association, reject conformation breeding. Too often, the show ring fattens the puppy mills and creates unsound dogs. We will not permit the AKC to ruin our dogs.”
They filed to legally trademark the name but, like the Lab litigants, lost in court. In 1997, the first Border Collie was shown in conformation at Westminster. I was there that year and interviewed a handler/owner who had been instrumental in getting the breed registered and in writing the standard. I asked her how she did her research. “This dog is shown in Australia, the British Isles and New Zealand. So I read their standards and asked them what they would do differently if they could. I tried to emphasize movement and gait. The standard shouldn’t describe a still dog. The Border Collie is almost a vision of movement even when it is standing still … always poised on the brink of action. The head drops for a reason. It is common knowledge among Border Collie people. That’s why I didn’t include a description of the head in the standard. I thought everybody would know that.”
In the benching area, surrounded by panting dogs crowded into crates and standing patiently while being primped on grooming tables, the woman sat in a folding chair, visibly distraught. Tearyeyed, she continued: “Right before you got here, a prominent breeder came by and said he will breed a dog with the head held higher. The head has to do with movement in the field, in making eye contact with the sheep, the pattern of behavior that has evolved from two centuries of work. Now I regret having fought so hard for this. The standard should not threaten the dog as a working animal, but I believe it now will.” About the same time the Border Collie war was raging, AKC enthusiasts saw an opportunity to register the Jack Russell Terrier (JRT), an irascible, independent dog with an intense work ethic, extremely diverse genome and phenotype as dissimilar as that of the Border Collie. Many Jack Russell Terrier breeders vehemently opposed the action, claiming that the breed’s physical and working characteristics would be jeopardized by this move. Nevertheless, the splinter group formed the requisite national breed club, named itself the Jack Russell Terrier Breeders Association (JRTBA) and gained AKC recognition in 2001.
A lawsuit ensued. After an expensive court battle, the name Jack Russell Terrier was awarded to the working phenotype and the AKC changed the conformation dog’s name to Parson Russell Terrier. The AKC parent club is now the Parson Russell Terrier Association of America.
Writer Alston Chase, who includes the story of the breakup of the breed in his book We Give Our Hearts to Dogs to Tear (2008, Transaction Publishers), told me, “The Jack Russell Terrier is a feisty, very aggressive, very tough dog. But middle-class urbanites don’t really want that kind of dog. They want a dog that will be a good pet.” Chase, who lives in rural Montana, has bred the working terrier since the 1970s.
The public took notice of the rather obscure breed when it became a media darling in the 1980s. Chase said, “The overbreeding followed the popularity driven by the media, not by the dog itself.” Aggressive and difficult in a pet environment, the breed was misrepresented as a mischievous lap dog on shows like the NBC sitcom Frasier. Surprised and disappointed by their dogs’ ornery personalities and exercise requirements, urban pet owners abandoned JRTs at shelters in record numbers.
According to Chase, one of only a handful of people in the U.S. continuing to breed the old-fashioned dog, “We’re doing what we can to prevent extinction of the original breed, but people aren’t in love with the value of diversity in the dog. They want dogs that look alike.”
Geneticist Jasper Rine, in a letter to the AKC supporting the Border Collie anti-conformation campaign (included in the appendix of McCaig’s 2007 book), predicted what was to come. “It may be nearly impossible to breed for a particular behavior based on heterozygous advantage and still achieve a homogenous conformation.” Breeding dogs for fixed conformation means breeding for homozygosis (the formation of genetically identical gametes) of the genes that contribute to appearance. In doing so, genetic linkage (the tendency of genes located in proximity to each other on a chromosome to be inherited together during meiosis, or cell division) may result in genes near those controlling conformation becoming homozygous as well. Unfortunately, chance determines which genes are swept up. By breeding for conformation, breeders may be breeding away from desirable behavior, even putting alleles (forms of a gene) at risk for extinction.
So, what has happened to the Labrador Retriever, Border Collie and Jack Russell Terrier over the last 15 years?
The shorter-legged, more compact field-bred Lab continues to be shown in Canada, the UK and other countries that don’t disqualify individuals based on size. In the U.S., conformation and companion Labs are getting increasingly larger. Will diseases linked to large size compromise the American line? Time will tell.
As a consequence of the acrimonious Border Collie war, few working dog breeders had a desire to become specialty judges, so the fate of the conformation dog was left in the hands of generalist judges who lacked sheepdogtrial experience. As predicted, the standard created a split type: working dogs continue to be a rag-tag group, dissimilar in shape, size and color, but the same in their relentless determination to move sheep from one place to another. In contrast, AKC dogs look very similar, but their ability to herd sheep is open to question. Are both types called Border Collies? Formally, yes, but the AKC dog is widely, popularly and even affectionately known as the “Barbie Collie” by some: pretty as a picture, but, according to the member-owned American Border Collie Association and others, as blandly attractive and vacuous as the doll from which the name derives.
The working Border Collie is safe for now, but the old-fashioned Jack Russell Terrier can hardly be found. Like the Old English Bulldog who faded away with the passage of the 1835 Cruelty to Animals Act and the Wolfhound who died out with the demise of the wolf in the British Isles, the pre-AKC JRT will likely disappear as well. Eventually, sentimental breeders may attempt to recreate the breed when they realize what they’ve lost, and they may perhaps have some success in replicating the way the dog appeared. But the breed’s signature obstreperous temperament is something people will only read about in books.
* * * * *
Of the 400 breeds recognized worldwide today, more than two-thirds were created in the last 150 years. There’s no doubt that conformation exhibition and its requisite breed standard played a big part in subdividing breeds, closing studbooks, shrinking gene pools and diminishing genetic diversity.
It would seem, then, that words are indeed powerful. To say that the lexicon used to describe a purebred dog, or even name one, will not affect the way we engineer the animal contradicts the language-relativity hypothesis, which holds that the vernacular we use to frame our perceptions influences the way we regard, understand, interpret and reinvent them. As a tool, language plays an important role by which innovation—in this case, of a sentient human-made domestic animal—is further developed. Or, as the AKC says, refined.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? If you’re talking about dog breeds, that’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is no.
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