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You may be wondering what all the Mongrel stuff is about here. Well I want to use this place to explain. I really think that mutts and mongrels are getting a bad rap. Some pedigree dog owners would have you believe that a crossbred dog is nothing more than a pet. It could never serve any real purpose. Well personally I believe that through crossbreeding and the destruction of pure breeds that the domestic dog could become a superior animal.
Genetically speaking there is no difference between a domestic dog and a wolf. One of the things that really makes my head spin is the amount of people claiming to have dogs that are part wolf. Then there's the percentages, just the other day I heard that some dog was 40 percent wolf now I'll try to do the math:
How many wolves are out there that they manage to have so much contact with our pets? So I guess my point is that there are a whole lot of folks out there saying this and that about their dogs when it simply go ahead and let our pets run free, and creating unwanted puppies. No I'm talking about selective breeding, just not the selection that is common practice. Many common canine ailments are in fact genetic diseases. Through line breeding and inbreeding (basically pure-breeding) recessive genes are more likely to pair and result in defects. This is why many breeds have been destroyed by AKC standards. The result is an increasing number of dogs being born blind, or deaf.
To relate this to human disease, take hemophilia. Hemophilia was historically thought of as a disease of royalty. The fact is that it is caused by a recessive gene, which must be present in both parents. Historically the breeding stock of rayal families may have been very small, similiar to one dog breed out of hundreds. The result is a greater percentage of recessive genes, and a higher probability for disease. I'm not saying that hemophiliacs are inbred, I'm trying to show how genetic diseases are magnified when parents are genetically similar.
Here are some links related to the Mongrel Dogs page.
