it's also why i kind of roll my eyes a bit when i see discussions about how "we shouldn't breed based on pre-existing dog breeds and looks, only function and working ability!" because like sure, i can understand where that's coming from, but think about it practically. there is no generic "herding" dog - are you herding cattle, sheep, fowl? small groups or large? are you moving them long distances or splitting up a group? do you have a fence, or is your dog acting as the fence? are you working all day, or casually? what's the climate and landscape like? because by the time you answer all of these questions you've now laid out some very specific criteria for the kind of work you're doing and you need a specific type of dog to do it well, and you've limited yourself back to basically the exact same breeds you had to start with.
a rough collie and a border collie are both medium-sized, double-coated, sheep herding dogs. they are also NOT interchangeable. the people seeking out a BC for work would likely not be happy with a rough collie, and vice versa. if you take every herding breed and then start splitting them down for specific working criteria, you just end up with basically the exact same breed divides that you already had.
the same goes for every purpose - there's a hundred different types of hunting, of protection, of drafting, even dogs who are only companions do it in different ways. yes closed studbooks suck and a lot of breed communities are over-protective of purity to their significant detriment, but i think people who say they want to improve/recreate a breed and then willfully ignore the history of that same breed are doing their dogs a serious disservice.
94 notes
·
View notes
i could rant about love and what it and the ppl in my life mean to me all day. this is truly my number 1 pisces trait, worse than any hyperfixation i could go off about
5 notes
·
View notes