What makes a breed a 'breed'? Discussions

I agree totally. Of course every breed will throw dogs with certain breed faults, particularly those pertaining to the look of the dogs, when health and temperament are the breeders' priorities.

Yes I love both of those books, but strangely even though I've read them many times and have there here in front of me on my PC shelf, funnily I can't seem to find any indication that before Malamutes were recognised by the AKC, they were crossbred with European dogs ;-)

I live near many, many NIS registered NI's as many NI people here know, and most of them look like badly bred Sibes/Mals/GSDs !

The NIS is a Society ! Are you the Spokesperson for every member/breeder and talk on behalf of all breeders who are members of that Society ? If not how could you possibly know that ?

The whole of call of the wild is about a GSD type dog running wild! Whilst the story is fictional the fact behind it are not. Or are you trying to say breeding between native and non native breeds of the north happened to everyone else BUT Mals?? I'm at work now (will get told off for reading!) but i will find the page in the book on Nome when i get home . . .

Thought its a society to be a registered NIS breeder you have to follow the code of ethics and one of the key points is heathly dogs with health tests carried out.

I've thought about this for a while and I would make a comparison to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was an American/French artist who was heavily influential in the Dadaist movement of the early 20th century.

His philosophy was that a piece of art was only a piece of art because a person said so. Therefore anything that is placed in an art gallery is a piece of art. He put a working urinal in an art gallery and it sold for millions. Just because it was displayed in an art gallery in the manner of art. This brought about a crisis in the art world, the whole question of 'what is art?', and the aesthetics of the 20th century.

So my answer to what makes a breed a breed is .... human beings. Humans put labels on things, it's human nature. Dogs don't know what a breed is, but as humans we are able to classify dogs into breeds to our specifications. Because we say a dog is a certain breed then that is what it is. Another way to describe this is through semantics. A chair is a chair because that is what we label it.

I'm guessing that's not really the type of answer the OP was asking for, but it's how I like to look at it

I wasn't interested in the call of the wild to begin with, it's a work of fiction, with controversy surrounding which actual facts it was based on, although most are agreed that of course the area JL was in and why he was there, I was talking about your claim that Malamutes were heavily crossbred with european dogs before recognition, and asked for proof, which I am genuinely interested in.

Will dig the quote out tonight . . .

Better not push it too much at work as i'm meant to be writing training docs not writing posts . . .Oh well

Did I say Mals didn't come in other colours?

BUT they still look like Mals..greys, reds, seals..they still LOOK like Mals..

On of the points you made as to why you don't think they have type was colour. You also listed other things but my point was dogs being a different colour doesn't mean they don't have type.

I think I know what Louise means, in that NIs lack any uniform colour, ie, some look like SIbes because of the colour, some look like GSDs because of the colour. At least that's what I think anyway

The colour of a dog’s coat does not matter if it is within the breed standard and the coat is of the correct type. What is confusing is if the general impression is of say a GSD and the coat colour and arrangement is exactly what you would expect to find on a different breed. Have been trying not to bring NI into this thread but I saw one a week ago, looked structurally like a poor bred GDS complete with the large semaphore ears but the coat colour and markings were those of the Mal complete with mask and cap, the texture was not correct for either breed so have no idea where that came from.

I see someone has changed the wikipedia Northern Inuit info to say 'medium size mongrel not a breed', to whoever is that petty, can you please go back and change the size to large as I would say a 40kg dog is a large size. Pleased you have removed the bit where it said sled dog btw.

many thanks

Don't know who did it but i have changed it back now

What has that to do with Dogsey, can such matters be delt with by PM or on the NI Forum?

I don't know what it said before as I never got past the sledding bit
What have you changed it to ?

Ah yes, good point.

Hey hun,
Sorry that this is totally off topic but could you post some pic's for me of the different colours cos I hate to admit this but I have never seen a mal.
Thank you muchly x

A hybrid was used pretty recently, but was called by a breed name to avoid the legalities that would entail, was put to a bitch of the same breed named falsely assigned to the hybrid, and the litter sold as another unrecognised breed.
The pups are now in the available genepool as `purebreds` when they are actually 1/4 wolf, 1/4 husky, and 1/2 a particular unrecognised breed.

*The information about the hybrids own parentage and his use as a stud and the deliberately false naming of a litter from him came from the words of the owner of the hybrid incidentally, [ which I found ], the details of which were sent to Admin.
I am not prepared to publicly discuss the who`s / when`s etc as the litter are basically illegal to have as pets by DEFRA definition and I`m not prepared to put those dogs at risk by naming names, so people can either take my word on it or not but Admin were given the evidence so that I was`nt just throwing out `speculation` etc.
The hybrid incidentally was sold by a founder of a certain unrecognised breed to the person who used him at stud. No idea what happened to the littermates of the hybrid, one can only speculate as to whether or not they were kept, sold, used for similar breeding, etc, but it`s fair to wonder just how many hybrids are around under deliberately false breed name/s and with false `papers` :?

This should help

http://www.geocities.com/~texalmal/alasmal/malcolor.html

oh right nice one thanx hun x

sorry to post off topic but I don't think the person that changed the wikipedia NI breed info would be on a NI breed forum, if they were they would see that it is a breed and not a mongrel