In an ideal world....no mutts?

In my expierence the Mutts were the best pets!!!!!!!! The pure breed were the difficult dogs.

As far a general pets go, my family has had excellent luck with mixed breeds. My father aways got 8-10 week old mixed breed uppies that without exception were excellent family pets. Maybe it was just luck, but it left me with a soft spot for them. We had some purebreds too but mixed breed dogs are just because you like them.

ORIGINAL: aussiegirl

I think the ideal world would be were every dog, mix or not, had a perfectly compatible owner...mabye your perfect match IS a shelter dog or a stray.

 
I like this idea....because at one point in my life my perfect dog was a mutt and right now it is a purebred.
 
I think while I am opposed to irresponsible breeding I am not opposed to mutts. That is to say, I'm not oppposed to dogs it is how they get here that bugs me. It's females being bred too young, too early, and not cared for that makes me angry. It's males with bad temperments left unaltered and running loose.  It's folks breeding dogs to make a buck without checking to see if both dogs are healthy, or crossing breeds with major known health problems and not checking to see if these dogs are going to have pups that live to 13----or are put down at 2 because of hip problems.
 
People intentionally crossing dogs for a purpose doesn't phase me if they have a clue.  Hasn't anyone else read a breed standard that seemed to have moved away from having a dog who could fulfil its original function and breed/whelp without assistance?
 
I find it disturbing that a color in the wrong place can make a dog that functions superbly at its intended purpose "unbreedable" because it does not meet the "standard."
 
As a Chinook fancier once said when I asked her opinion of the Chinook possibly becoming an akc breed:
"Color and coat don't pull the sled."  [sm=biggrin.gif]
 
Reading these posts and thinking about a mutt-less world I have the feeling we would be playing God in a way by removing all random-ness from the canine gene pool.
 
Then I realized that we've been doing it for thousands of years....made me stop and think for a minute.
 
Why don't we aim for creating a world where dogs are more likely to be healthy and have a good temperament and less likely to be sickly and nasty?
 
Here in New England spaying and neutering dogs has made a difference. There are shelters that "import" puppies from other areas to meet the demand for people who want to adopt puppies. This helps shelters overburdened with puppies in other parts of the US. and people wanting to adopt a mixed breed puppy can find one.  (It is controversial, though)
 
Here is a Mass. shelter that gets its puppies this way instead of folks dropping pups off;
[linkhttp://www.sterlingshelter.org/services/puppy_rescue.html]http://www.sterlingshelter.org/services/puppy_rescue.html[/link]
 
As for the "ideal" world---I vote with aussie girl.

I believe that in a perfect world, there would be no overpopulation. In essence, there would be no irresponsible breeding. By irresponsible, I mean breeding only for the sake of money, breeding because you think your dog needs to have puppies to be fulfilled, or just general carelessness on the behalf of the entire human race. In a perfect world, people would see that dogs are not mere possessions and that any carelessness on their behalf could contribute to the suffering of more dogs.

Would that mean no more mixed breeds? No. Dogs bred for a specific purpose/job would still exist and they would excel extraordinarily at that task. There would be no match to their capabilities. They would be bred responsibly and all dogs that were not quite so "perfect" in respect to their task would go to one of the many homes that were available and waiting on their perfect companion. They would be fixed so as not to pass on the genes that causes them to not succeed at their original task.

Would that mean no more shelter dogs? Most certainly it would. The shelter dog has almost become synonymous with the mixed breed dog. In a perfect world, there would be an overpopulation of wanting and caring homes for all dogs, not the other way around. Worldwide responsible breeding would cause the need for shelters to be nonexistent as every dog would have much more then adequate shelter from their loving family.

Just my 2 cents and MHO.

what i want to know is this:  IF it were a "perfect world" and dogs were mixed for superior performance, who would be the judge of what was actually "superior" performance?  would there be a standard?
 
and then:  would there only be "authorized" breeding?
 
because the truth is:  shelter dogs and "mutts" are the result of "unauthorized" breeding, whether it be through irresponsible owners not spaying/neutering nor keeping track of their intact dog's whereabouts, or whether it be dogs like rosie, who is really not a mutt but does not meet the APBT breed standard, and who was probably selected for breeding (and we know she was bred, but not by us) for her coloring and blue eyes, but not for her health (weak tendons). 
 
i think about this a lot.  because of BSL, i've often thought i support strict regulations in breeding that would, essentially, extinct the mutt, as well as hopefully stop the backyard breeders who breed APBT for fighting, and the puppy mills.  but "regulations" scare the libertarian in me, and i'm not sure who would make the regulations and whether i think anyone really has the moral authority to make those decisions for the rest of us, not the mention, who's really to say what's "superior", since even purebreds are, in a sense, mutts, if all dogs really descended from wolves....  we all talk about behaving responsibly and spaying and neutering and appropriately containing and no unwanted puppies and everyone has a home, but in doing so, i think we are lacking the foresight that this "world" we speak of would certainly stop the evolution of the dog, and leave us with "eugenic" dogs only. 
 
and who are we to fool with evolution?
 
i still don't really know what i think about this, though, so take it for what it is, a stream of consciousness musing.

ORIGINAL: aussiegirl

I think the ideal world would be were every dog, mix or not, had a perfectly compatible owner...mabye your perfect match IS a shelter dog or a stray.

 
I agree! My perfect match is a mixed breed. He's perfect for me and if there were only purebreds he wouldn't exist. []

in addition to my earlier post, i would like to add this:

opting to mix breeds, or create mutts, based on performance would eventually create another purebred.  after all, if you believe the "history", amstaffs are a very old strain of bulldog mixed with a mastiff or a bull mastiff to create a new breed, and yet they are now considered to be a "pure breed".

and, from an evolutionary perspective, and keeping in mind the mixing of human races as an example, i would like to pose the following question:  are mutts the next purebreds?  or to phrase it differently, are mutts the next evolution of dog?  do purebreds have a certain future in our current "breeding" climate?

just some thoughts this topic evokes..

I don't think "breeding for performance" would create new purebreds. The whole concept of the purebred dog is a very recent invention. There have always been "types" of dogs, but they were by no means kept strictly purebred. People thought nothing of breeding Joe's excellent hunting dog to Sam's excellent hunting dog, regardless of the dog's lineages or differences in appearance, if they were both excellent hunting dogs and promised to produce more excellent hunting dogs.

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

I don't think "breeding for performance" would create new purebreds. The whole concept of the purebred dog is a very recent invention. There have always been "types" of dogs, but they were by no means kept strictly purebred. People thought nothing of breeding Joe's excellent hunting dog to Sam's excellent hunting dog, regardless of the dog's lineages or differences in appearance, if they were both excellent hunting dogs and promised to produce more excellent hunting dogs.

It has in some cases with horses.  National Show Horses have their own registry and regulations, and the stud book has offically been closed on Trakhners, essentially making them a "pure" breed.  As far as temperment goes--that is debatable.  I have been around many warmbloods of various backrounds and have never been around one who I particularly liked or found to have anything special in the brains department.

One thing that the horse world does with its high quality "mutts" (warmbloods) that I don't see happening on the American dog scene is inspecting and evaluating individuals even before registry.  Not only do the horses in question have to come from a certain backround breedingwise, but they also have to pass an inspection just to be registered, and go through additional testing to be considered breeding stock.

I think we have to remember that inbreeding is not always bad and outcrossing is not always good.

The Arabian horse was extensively inbred by the beduins that developed the breed--and horsedom would not be the same without this breed's influence.  The horses were not just bred for their ability in battle and endurance, but also purity of bloodlines and  looks--and this was all without the help of any sort of modern technology or genetics knowledge.

On the other hand, one of the most devestating and widespread genetic disorders in equine history, HYPP, has been traced back to the stallion Impressive, who was a registered QH  but was actually a Thoroughbred/Quarter Horse cross.

ORIGINAL: Chuffy

I don't actually agree 100% with OP.  That is with:

2) breeding mutts whether accidently or purposefully is bad 

I'm beginning to think that it is a bad thing that all the caring and responsible people out there hold back from breeding because of the overpopulation problem.  It leaves the market wide open for money grabbing, irresponsible, uncaring, ignorant idiots.... I wonder if more good people deciding to breed (even crossbreeds) responsibily  and ethically might squeeze the bybs and puppy mills out of the market and therefore positively impact the over population problem....?

 
Chuffy,
 
I'd absolutely love to see Xerxes' blood carry on further but by the same token I don't want the awesome responsibility of finding 8-12 good homes and then the daunting realization that I can't oversee the raising of those special pups. 
 
So you're right, I love my dogs enough to not breed them.  At some point, however, I do anticipate getting a call for Xerxes to stud back into the K'azaar/Ru'lin bloodline.  And that will at least get me a puppy to be named in the future.

i would miss mutt's. 

ORIGINAL: politepuppyobedience

Hey... If this was a different world with no mutts than all we would have in the world would be wolves.[] Since they were the original ones anyway.[]

 
Actually they would look more like basenjis since the basenji is the closest and oldest breed of dog, comparable in structure to the original dog.  Wolves are a fairly new compared to the oldest fossils of dogs found in Africa.
 
In that case it would take very special people to own such a dog because they are not the type for the average person and take a lot of dedication to train.
 

ORIGINAL: gaylemarie

i would miss mutt's. 

 
Me too. [X(] I can't imagine a world without mutts.
 
Joyce

ORIGINAL: mrv
In a perfect world, there would be homes for random bred dogs (mutts happen when  respobsible breeders get just a bit careless (or someone gets careless for them) and there is more than one breed in the home too.

IMO responsible breeders do not get careless.  If they did the could end up with a bitch that was bred every season...