The dog’s most recent
jobs were developed only after we started hunting with guns and killing from a
distance. Small dogs (bantams) and short-legged dogs (dwarfs) that otherwise
would not have survived in nature had been kept and intentionally bred for
probably no more important a reason than our inherent human capriciousness.
(I’m sure that’s also the reason why certain coat colours that are rare in
wolves or feral dogs – white, black, deep red, piebald, tricolour, black and
tan, merle – became more prevalent in dogs. Don’t go looking for logical
reasons for everything we did once dogs started living with us. One factor
that’s predicable in our relationship with dogs is our quirky
unpredictability.) These smaller or shorter legged dogs became the hunting
companions of the foot hunter, the man who walked to hunt. The smallest dogs
were used as earth dogs, to scent out prey that had gone to ground. Their
descendants evolved into terriers, dachshunds, pinschers and other small farm
dogs. The larger ones – those that went on to become the Bassets and Laufhunds
– were eventually used to chase larger prey over rough terrain.
Royalty, nobility and
aristocracy throughout Europe and Asia used trained hunting dogs for sport hunting
before the development of the gun, when game was captured by net or shot by
arrow and it was these dogs that formed the breeding root stock for the modern
gundogs, the pointers, setters and retrievers. I’ll discuss all of these dogs
too, in the next chapter.
Where ever royalty or
nobility hunted they enacted laws to prevent local peasants from using their
own dogs to capture game set aside for the pleasure of the king. Peasants were
compelled to hobble their dogs, usually by mutilating them. In some regions
laws stipulated that peasant dogs have their tails docked. This was thought to
alter their balance enough to make them inefficient hunters. It was also a way
to determine whether a dog belongs to the aristocracy or the peasantry. More
often the mutilation involved amputating a limb. The Swedish province of Oland,
a thin, long island just off the east coast of that country was once a private
hunting ground of the Swedish king, who had fallow deer imported onto the
island as suitable game for his court and his friends to hunt. Until the law
was changed in 1801 it was illegal for Oland peasants to keep dogs unless one
of the dog’s front limbs was amputated.
The dog’s
brain has finite abilities
Over the millennia
dogs were bred for a variety of utilitarian reasons, to be eaten, to be
companions, to guard, attack, fight, kill, pull carts and sleds, turn spits,
herd and chase, follow trails, point, set and retrieve. They are capable of
such varied abilities because their minds are flexible. They inherited from the
wolf a wonderful selection of hard-wired biological “learning centres” in their
brains, abilities the wolf needed to survive and breed. Through intentional
selective breeding, but just as often through whimsy and serendipity, we
enhanced some of these learning centres and diminished others.
One of the factors
that differentiates what a dog’s brain is capable of, from what our brains are
capable of, is the influence of culture. In us, behaviour spreads from person
to person, almost like a contagion. This is, of course the basis for our
religious beliefs, our fashion sense, even our food preferences. Not so in the
dog. Other than in puppyhood, dogs are relatively poor learners from the
‘culture’ of other dogs. In that sense, there are limited cultural influences
on their behaviour. But our culture has certainly influenced today’s dogs. In
the last two hundred and fifty years we began breeding them primarily for their
looks – for conformity – rather than for utility. We started classifying dogs into
categories and then into breeds. Once we had done that we prohibited other dogs
from joining these elite categories. We created “purebreds” around 400 types of
dog that have come to dominate dog numbers throughout North America, Europe,
Japan, Australia and New Zealand.?Most of my family’s dogs have been purebreds
– Scottish and Yorkshire terriers, Labrador and Golden Retrievers. Most of the
dogs I care for at work are purebreds. This has given us an eclectic choice of
colours, shapes, sizes and dispositions to choose from, but it has not
necessarily been good for dogdom, certainly not for their physical health and
well-being.