There’s an interesting article up on the web from the NYT Sunday Magazine: The Modern Kennel Conundrum. It’s an examination of the relatively recent phenomenon of designer dogs – puggles, labradoodles, Sharp Assets (Shar Pei x Basset – holy cr@p!). I’m not going to summarize – as the saying goes, RTWT (hopefully my link works – the Times’ registration system sometimes messes me up) – but I am going to post my reaction.

Part of me says, “Who cares?” I’m interested in dogs that can do a job – bird dogs, sight hounds, and scent hounds/earth dogs. As long as I can find folks that are producing critters that work, I’m OK. Otherwise, it’s a (kinda) free country – knock yourself out. If you don’t like puppy mills – educate people. If you don’t like designer dogs – or the AKC show craziness – keep your money in your pocket.

Another part of me – the part that caused me to start writing this screed – starts in with the head-shaking. It seems to me that what many people really want is a little robot-dog-doll – something that you can turn off when your ‘busy modern lifestyle (TM)’ demands and turn back on when you need the emotional support that dogs are so good at providing. I’m mostly serious here; hypothesis: one of the best things that could happen to dogs is the development of robotics to a point where something like this could provide dog-equivalent emotional support.

Dogs are living things – they are first, last and always, dogs – not children in fur suits. They have been incredibly successful because of their social skills – looking at it from a Selfish Gene perspective, this whole designer thing may be yet another adaptation – but it pains me to see people (mostly Americans) expose themselves as needy, unreflective and basically empty in front of the rest of the planet and any aliens watching our teevee signals.

Wow, that was dyspeptic! Here’s a palate cleanser:

I’ll be interested to see if Patrick (the Terrierman) comments on the article – always good working dog perspective over there.