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 Great Dane Dog Head Study Pedigree Vintage Authentic 1935 $11.85 Time Remaining: 7d 13h 47m Buy It Now for only: $11.85 |
Pedigree Dogs
Which is the Oldest Pedigree Dog?
The first "dogs" are thought to have been wolves. They were wild, lean, and worked as a team in a pack to become very successful hunters. A dog and a wolf are the same species of animal and if they mate, they will produce fertile offspring. If a man mates with a bird he could not produce fertile offspring because they are two different species.
Man domesticated wolves by feeding them or by adopting wolf cubs. In return for food and care, the wolves gave their loyalty to their keepers. Man used his canine companions to hunt for food and also to guard his home.
When the domesticated wolves had litters of cubs, there may have been some that were smaller than the rest. In the wild the smaller or weakest of the litter would have been lost by natural selection but Man’s intervention helped them to survive. If the smaller wolves mated other small wolves, possibly from the same litter, a new strain of smaller, tamer, more dog-like wolves began.
Before man’s intervention the Wolves would have evolved slightly differently on different continents. There are dingoes in Australia, wild "painted" dogs in Africa, Chihuahuas in South America, etc. But man has changed wild dogs to suit his own purposes.
Man found that his canine friends could be trained to do tasks which were beyond man’s abilities, like herding cattle or sheep. The heading instinct is simply an extension to the pack hunting instinct which certain dogs like collies excelled at. Other dogs were trained to pull carts and sledges and some trained to retrieve fishing nets from the sea or game shot by arrow or spear. So the retrievers were created.
The earliest records of Man working with dogs is believed to be the Nordic variety but undoubtedly Man already had a close bond with his canine companions long before records were kept.
There were no inoculations in those days so weak dogs died of rabies and other dog illnesses. In cold countries, the dogs that survived were the ones with thick coats and in hot climates those with very little cotes survived. As the survivors interbred so certain characteristics became apparent.
Farmers found that small dogs were good at digging and getting into the burrows of foxes, rabbits and rats, and they began picking the smallest dogs of their litters to mate with other small dogs. Thus began the terriers, or "diggers", fierce enough to kill vermin.
Emperor’s and important dignitaries’ used small dogs as personal bodyguards which they would carry unseen inside their long flowing robes. These small dogs were trained to attack the throat of anyone who came close to their owner. If you have ever wondered at the shape of a Pekinese’s face, you will understand they were bread that way on purpose.
As civilization took hold dogs were used less for work but they acquired new roles. Ladies liked small, fancy lapdogs, or long-haired dogs that they could brush. Children liked unaggressive, playful dogs. When the family dog has a litter, one dog is often kept. Six months later, the father dog mates with his daughter that was kept, and another batch of dogs is produced that look like the family favorite.
This is not natural selection; man took it upon himself to select the best-natured dogs to breed with for the purpose of producing dogs for his own design. So what do we mean when we say any animal is a pedigree?
A pedigreed animal is one that has its ancestry recorded. The number of generations required varies from breed to breed, but all pedigreed animals have papers from the registering body that attest to their ancestry.
Sometimes the word purebred is used synonymously with pedigreed, but purebred refers to the animal having a known ancestry, and pedigree refers to the written record of breeding. Not all purebred animals have their lineage in written form.
All pedigree (or purebred) animals share one thing with crossbreeds; they have all at sometime in their linage been interbred.
About the Author
Noel Dundas is the author of several publications, including The Canine Diabetes Management Guide and the Canine First-Aid Handbook.
Do pedigree dogs with certs have more value than those without certs?
I am talking about pedigree certificates.
Yes? No? Give your own reason.
What a disappointment - with just the main question-line visible, I thought that you were asking one of the few sensible questions that get asked in YA Dogs, and so would ask WHICH certificates were worthwhile, and why. But no.....
Okay, I'm here, so I'll continue.
When it comes to pedigrees, the value relates totally to what they tell the READER about the genetic probabilities of the pooch it belongs to. I say "probabilities", not "certainties", because the random mixing during meiosis and the random matching during fertilisation mean that the same litter can (to misquote Charles Dickens) produce "the best of dogs and the worst of dogs".
First, realise that every dog with 2 known parents HAS a pedigree - but most aren't worth the time needed to print them up.
• For anyone who wishes to import a pooch for showing and/or breeding purposes, an Export Pedigree is an absolute must - without that plus the Registration Certificate and Certificate of Ownership, the importer will not be able to register the pooch, will not be able to enter it in shows, will not be able to register its puppies.
• The Certificate of Registration and Certificate of Ownership are also essential for anyone who wants to show a local pooch or register pups from it, but the pedigree supplied by the breeder is superior to the one supplied by the Kennel Club (especially in my breed! The reason is that the English-speaking KCs ignore, do not record-&-display: courage-etc certificates, hip-&-elbow-etc certificates, Breed Survey Classifications, show gradings).
Unless YOU know each of the actual pooches named in a pedigree, and go to the trouble of checking up on:
• what show gradings & critiques each one received
• what training qualifications each one received
• what "health" certificates each one obtained
• what virtues & problems each one was known to produce - especially temperaments & health
then the pedigree is just a useless piece of wallpaper.
To BYBers and puppy-millers, that is ALL a pedigree is, although they will use coloured inks to highlight anything at all that any distant ancestor obtained, and will use that as a sales-benefit to excuse prices that their pups are NOT worth - but they WON'T go to the trouble of researching what "bad genes" each ancestor has been proven to pass on. (And by the time pups reach a pet-shop, after being "batched" from the puppy-miller to an agent who re-batches them to either local pets-shops or more-distant agents, don't go betting that any pedigree supplied actually belongs to the pup it is alleged to be for. But the KCs will accept the alleged pedigree & registration without question....)
Of more importance to the newbie buyer are:
(1) Whether the breeder has gone to the trouble of REGISTERING the litter with the ONE official kennel club/breed registry of the nation. In most countries there is only one KC, but in the rebellious USofA there are dozens of rebel 'registries', whose 'papers' and 'titles' and 'training qualifications' are worthless except to those mug enough or desperate enough (hoping to at least LOOK to have credible credentials-etc) to pay for them - the only Yank kennel club accepted anywhere in the world is the AKC, despite its many flaws.
(2) Whether the registration is full & open, or limited & full of endorsed restrictions.
(3) Whether the breeder can SHOW you the health certificates for the dogs he/she actually owns.
(4) What is recorded on the printed & signed Guarantee the breeder supplies with each pup - many are actually aimed at making it almost impossible for a buyer to claim on the breeder if any of the genetic "unthinkables" afflicts the pooch in the next few years. (NO Guarantee available? - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! Go find an honest, careful, confident breeder)
• To ask about a breed and a litter, join some of the YahooGroups dedicated to various aspects of living with that breed. Each group's Home page tells you which aspects they like to discuss, and how active they are. Unlike YA, they are set up so that you can have an ongoing discussion with follow-up questions for clarification. Most allow you to include photos in your messages.
[Cookie]: A "Top Contributor" should know that each viewer sees the posts in a different order, depending on what they have TDed or YA's randomisation for voting, so your
"I have to disagree with a great deal of the above posters remarks"
should be replaced by the poster's alias and the SPECIFIC points.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967
Pedigree Dogs ad shot 1000 FPS using the Phantom camera