Most are purebreds, but not show dogs-obviously breeders' rejects. She knew this was true because for one thing, look at the dogs on. Huh? Yes, she said: In their quest for a dog with some perfect trait, they bred litter after litter, and sold the rejects for $5 to $15 each. I'd like to think I convinced her that no ethical breeder would be interested in creating a hairless pit bull (although I suppose some might think a toothless one might be a good idea) but I am not sure I fully succeeded.įast forward to dinner talk-and another writer who proclaimed show breeders were responsible for shelter dogs.

In hairless Chinese Cresteds and other breeds thought to arise from the same mutation). I tried to explain that AKCĭoesn't make breeds that way, but that from a scientific viewpoint it would be interesting to know if the responsible mutation was the same as that causing hairlessness in other breeds (this dog also had dentition similar to that seen It was the last comment that led to indignation on the part of the writer, who proclaimed the owners had neutered the dog because they refused to allow the AKC to make another breed from it, and that they had been offered thousands and thousands of dollars by breeders but had refused because of their ethics. Because I'm interested in genetics, I was anxious to find out if the writer was sure of the dogs' parentage (yes, supposedly two fully coated pit bull parents) and if they'd had any DNA testing done or otherwise made the dog's DNA available to researchers. I was interested in an article one writer wrote about a hairless pit bull. I could swear that once they found out my dogs were an actual breed the compliments and interest stopped. A few initially thought my dogs were also pretty cool, but that was when they still thought they were mixes. Almost every other writer had cute mixes and we all cooed over how cool they were. As with any group of dog writers, we talked about our own dogs and shared their pictures. I recently attended an event with several other dog writers, most of whom were a younger crowd who wrote blogs or published local pet newspapers.

Show Me! by D. Caroline Coile