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Originally Posted by Ringo1  I think Thor is adorable. I love his picture in your avatar. |
Thanks so much! As it happens, he agrees with you.
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Originally Posted by Woogie Man Maybe I'm just bored, or want to play devil's advocate, but, for the sake of debate I'll take issue with some of this.
While all dogs were, at some time, created for a purpose, that is not entirely true in all cases. In the case of the Yorkshire, it was bred from ratters but quickly lost its purpose and became a companion dog. There was certainly no 'need' for the Yorkshire Terrier. The British Isles was the home of the ratting terrier and there were enough terriers already to fill any need. I have to wonder how a single mouse has managed to survive there, but they have LOL.
What the Yorkshire Terrier did was to supplant the Clydesdale/Paisley Terrier as the most beautiful terrier. The Clydesdale/Paisley, a variation of the Skye, was the first British terrier I have seen referenced that was bred mainly for looks (the silky coat). Old Terriermen of the day bemoaned this dog for its uselessness as a terrier (due to the silky coat) and grumbled about its winning the ribbons over their Skyes. Fact is, a silky coat was not desirable in a terrier and the best justification for them was mainly for looks. The Yorkshire merely replaced the Clydesdale/Paisley so it can be said that a Yorkshire was bred for looks and was never bred for its ancestors' true purpose.
Which begs the question....why breed a dog just for looks? Maybe because it is fashionable and there is a market for them? The Yorkshire was bred by miners and weavers but quickly became lap dogs for aristocrats. Does anyone really think they would have become so popular at the beginning had there not been a demand (i.e. money to be made) for a beautiful lap dog?
As to how carefully Yorkshire were bred, it is widely stated that the early breeders were mostly illiterate. That's not to say they didn't know what they were doing, but careful records were not kept. As for breeding for health, I have seen references in early books on the Yorkshire stating that the average lifespan was only 4 to 5 years.
I don't think there's a lot of difference in the hows and whys of the creation of the Yorkshire and the mixed breeds of today. The differences came about through adhering to a standard and dedicated breeders breeding for the betterment of the breed. Who's to say that couldn't happen with some breeders of mixed breeds today? As mentioned earlier, there are Cockapoo and Labradoodle clubs, so obviously some of these breeders are serious about their breedings. They will never get AKC recognition due to the rule of any new breed needing to be made up of at least 3 breeds. This change was made the year after the Silky Terrier was recognized by the AKC. The Silky, a mix of an Australian Terrier and a Yorkshire Terrier, is a designer dog by today's definition that had the good fortune of getting AKC recognition. Under today's AKC requirements, the Silky would not be recognized as anything more than a designer dog.
As to the health of the designer dogs, any breeding, be it pure bred or cross bred, has unknowns until the pups are born. A happy combination of genes can bring great results and an unlucky pairing, even with well bred healthy dogs, can bring disappointment and unexpected issues.
I do think that, statistically speaking, mixed breeds are healthier than pure breds. I remember the University of Tennessee study from a few years ago on liver shunt. All pure breeds had a higher incidence than the mixed breeds studied. Of course, a statistic is meaningless when applied to an individual, but it is telling in some ways.
All that being said, I don't advocate for mixed breedings and feel that it's true that most of those breeding 'designer' dogs don't have a clue about what they are doing. The same could be said for many breeding pure breds, however, so one has to be careful, no matter what. And it is very true that shelters are full of mixed breeds, which is probably the biggest reason not to support 'designer' breeders. There are too many of these dogs that already are in need of a home and I think getting one of these dogs would be a great choice for someone looking for a cute mixed breed. |
Woogie, you always bring something interesting into the mix.
Thank you for bringing up the point that many breeds today are the result of unethical breeding. The biggest example I can think of it the "smushy faced" dogs. These are very cute, but those faces aren't good for BREATHING, which is a pretty important face function. Other older breeds like the bulldog have been bred for more and more extreme traits that again, are awful for the dogs that have to live with them.
That being said, our standards for humane treatment of animals are hugely different than they were 100 years ago. I'm thankful that today it's not considered okay to randomly breed dogs together and if you get puppies you don't like, you can just put them in a sack and drown them.
I don't particularly care about breeding yorkies so they all have silky coats and black saddles. I do care that breeders keep records to make sure they are not perpetuating health problems, and that they take lifelong responsibility for every life they create.
I have a hard time believing that someone who is breeding morkies is carefully screening for health problems in both breeds and keeping multi-generational records, because morkies seem to be a "why not?" kind of cross. I understand poodle crosses because of the low allergen factor and because a lot of poodles have health problems. But a morkie seems to just be another way to get a cute, small, low allergen companion.
Again, nothing against morkies, and I too would be happy to own one.
A lot of people don't believe that anyone should breed until the dog overpopulation problem is fixed. Hence, "don't breed or buy while animals die". I think this is an extreme stance though, and it basically means that you'd have no animals bred with forethought after 5 years. I do think that people should think carefully about bringing more dogs into the world when there are already so many without homes. It's not something to do on a whim.