Same attitude that causes people who are at best crappy drivers to go buy some hot shit sports car if they get the money to afford it then immediately wrap it around a tree. Same attitude that causes people to go spend ridiculous amounts of money at a restaurant that’s the new craze without bothering to ask whether or not they’re actually in the mood for some tiny bites of weird froth with liquid nitrogen smoke coming off the top when it’s clear a nice steak would be a better fit. Same attitude that causes people to hyper extend to buy a bigger and fancier house that’s miles beyond their needs and pocketbooks without ever thinking if maybe the extra money might be better spent in ways that would benefit them more. We live in a bizarrely aspirational society where people are trained to be ever escalating consumers so they’re inculcated in what’s “better” while never learning the critical thinking skills that would teach them that the only “better” is actually “better FOR ME and my needs.” I can’t do a damned thing about that kind of propagandizing, but I can and will tell people to avoid herding dogs and snow dogs because they’re hyperchallenging assholes until they decide to be pretty awesome and if that deflects a few people into adopting some sweet golden or lab mix then I think that’s a good thing.
This is due to the AKC, which is basically a organization to destroy dogs.
The real geniuses of the dog world are the LGD. They are much more independent problem solvers and only use as much energy as is required for the situation. If they need to be calm and not move for a day they are down for that or if they need to chase the flock up a mountain their down for that too. It’s really hard for me to think outside of those breeds.
Oh, you have NO idea how much I’m looking forward to having a couple of maremmas to protect my fainting goats. I’ll get them a jackass and a llama as backup, the coyotes and mountain lions won’t know what hit 'em. They’re not all that well suited to most people’s lifestyles though, due to their casual attitude toward land and where they’re allowed to go. Fine on acreage, problem in a suburban neighborhood. A lot like huskies in that!
The big difference is the lgd will always find its way home they go on patrol not chasing prey. My anatolian used to freak my friends out at parties when he would disappear to check the parameter. He’d come back 30 minutes later to make sure I was still there and not in trouble then a bit later head out to make sure nothing was sneaking up on us.
Once we got him a mastiff to guard he never roamed again. Since he’s convinced the mastiff is too dumb to breath if the anatolian isn’t there to remind him. Then a couple of years later we had kids and he gets bothers when the kids go one way and the mastiff goes the other and he has to find a high place where he can watch them all.
Genius, getting him a mastiff lol. My ideal pack is two or three ACDs, a couple ratters for the barn, a couple LGDs (the aforementioned Maremmas being first choice but I do like the Anatolians as well) and a Cane Corso professionally trained for guard duty on humans. A good tight fence around the boundary lines should curtail wanderlust to investigate any neighboring livestock–they can go ahead and chase the deer, elk, raccoons and bunnies all they like. I want a garden, dammit!
I had a Dalmatian when I was a kid, we got him as a puppy in 1992 (and he lived for 15 years!), and from what I remember Dalmatians were always a rarely seen breed. When the movie came out a few years later, more people were aware of the breed but it wasn’t like Dalmatians were everywhere. He was always turning heads and people would always stop to ask about him and if they could pet him because he was “Pongo from that movie!” (It’s funny, our next dog was actually almost going to be a Doberman, but that puppy ended up going somewhere else.)
Nowadays there is someone in the neighborhood who I see walking a Dalmatian from time to time.
I grew up with an Airedale and a doxie. Airedales were very popular in the late 1950s / early 1960s. Ever since then, I’ve only rarely ever seen one. (At various times in my life, I spent a lot of my leisure time hanging out at dog parks even though I didn’t have a dog.)
I’ve read somewhere that Airedales had a reputation for being vicious? They were called “Airedale Terrorizers”. Every Airedale I ever encountered was friendly and gregarious. Ditto every Boxer I ever met, and most Pit Bulls too.
BTW: To the poster who didn’t know where Dalmatia was – Try figuring out where Pomeranians come from!
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Schnauzer. Maybe when I was a kid…
Last time I saw a schnauzer it was hanging off my malemute’s tongue by its teeth. She was shocked when this little terrorist just leaped for her face when she was just walking by on a path. Both dogs on leashes, the schnauzer just had a problem with my giant floof I guess. It was a mini though, the giant ones tend to be rather dignified and chill. I’ve seen a couple of the big ones at the dog park.
I’m not seeing nearly so many giant breeds any more–used to see more mastiffs, St Bernards and Great Danes but not nearly as many over the last decade or so. The Bernese Mountain Dog is much more popular here in Portland. Those I see pretty often, and once in a very great while I see an Irish wolfhound, those guys always make me squee.
ISTM I’ve only seen Irish Wolfhounds twice in my life, both in the 1970s. The first time I saw one, I wasn’t even sure if it was a dog or some kind of horse.
The second time I saw one, was in San Francisco waiting to board the cable car from Aquatic Park back to Civic Center. For those who aren’t familiar: This route goes up a steep hill for several blocks.
So this guy with an Irish Wolfhound on a leash gets on the cable car, sitting on one of the outside seats. When the car got moving, the dog galloped alongside the car all the way up the mountain. The owner said that’s how he gives the dog his exercise.
You couldn’t do that today. Now, there are cordons and people have to wait in line and the conductors keep an eye on things. In those days, there were no cordons, people just gathered around, and as soon as the conductors got the car turned around and pushed off the turntable, everybody just stampeded to get a seat on the car. They’ve taken all the fun out of it.
Gentle not so much, unfortunately. I haven’t seen one in years, but every one of the several OES I met in my youth (mostly in my few years in Michigan for some odd reason) was nervous and snappy. Sometimes actively aggressive - definite tendency towards ‘shy-sharp’ which ain’t so good in such a large dog. And I’ve hard plenty of similar anecdotes - temperamentally at least the puppy-milled versions could be a handful. Apparently this was a bloodline issue, which come to think of it might explain that Michigan concentration. Add in being a big, drooly breed that needs a ton of regular brushing and suddenly you have a a lot of work. Plus they were never cheap. I’m not terribly surprised they’ve declined in popularity.
Dunno about vicious but some of them are definitely mouthy. My dad had one when I was a toddler and he said although he was gentle enough with me, when worked up and playing with adults he had a tendency to nip very hard to the point of leaving bruises which no amount of training seemed to be able to correct.
I have a miniature schnauzer. She is sleeping pressed against me this very moment!
I don’t think any breeds really have disappeared, but they certainly come and go in terms of popularity.
Dobermans were the ultimate “attack dogs”, “vicious dogs”, “guard dogs” when I was young. They’ve been replaced by pitbulls.
My friend had one that recently passed, he was the sweetest thing.
(Re: Dobermans). This too. I’ve encountered a few over the years, and they were always sweet and lovable. Rottweilers too.
I’ve had at least one doberman continuously since about 1985. Currently I have one purebred dobe and one dobe mix (as well as a GSD, cattle dog/pitbull mix and possibly catahoula mix).
My vet said that when he was in vet school in the early 70’s if a doberman came in, everyone moved to the opposite side of the exam room. But he also said he hasn’t seen an aggressive doberman in the last 30 years. I will always have a doberman.
I had an airedale, and my experience was they aren’t aggressive, They’re just typical terriers, but big. So they’re hard-headed, prey-driven, and always willing to engage.But also sweet and cuddly.
StG
My second husband had an absolutely gorgeous Dobie, huge and sweet and super smart and very well trained. His brother from the same litter was aggressive AF right from puppyhood and ended up being trained for attack/protection. Bad move, far as I was concerned, but not my dog so not my problem. We got him an Aussie shepherd puppy who ended up using him as her hunting dog–we had a line of arborvitae in the back yard and she’d go run barking towards it, get the Dobie all into the protective mode so he’d go run behind the trees along the fence and she’d stop short and wait. All the birds in the arborvitae would flush out as the Dobie ran past and she’d jump up and catch them on the wing and eat them. Weirdo. She could jump a mile, could have jumped right over the six foot fence without touching the top if she’d wanted to but she knew that was a no-no. Herding dogs tend to stay close to their people.
When I was in high school, in the early '80s, my family owned a hardware store. We had a regular customer who owned an orchard and hobby farm out on the outskirts of Green Bay, and he raised Irish Wolfhounds. He’d regularly come to the store in his station wagon, with a half-dozen of the dogs in the car with him. He’d leave them in the car, with the windows cracked, and I’d go out to the parking lot to see them. They’d get very excited, and bounce around in the car hard enough to make the car rock. 
Dog breeds come and go in waves. Whenever a film comes out starring a particular breed, its popularity shoots up until people experience its less attractive traits. But dogs live more than a decade so it takes a while.
Another thing that happens constantly is the transmogrification of a sturdy, healthy, sane, easy-to-care-for breed into a nervous, dimwitted animal with a pile of inherited health issues and an exaggerated physicality to which other health/care issues are attached, all this courtesy of inbreeding for beauty contests aka dog shows. When this happens, the people who liked the original type dog find another, similar, un-ruined breed. Repeat ad nauseum.
Almost all the breeds popular 20 to 50 years ago are no longer seen much. And if you did see them, they would be caricatures of their old selves. There are exceptions, which are mostly Labradors and Golden Retrievers. Along with dachshunds for some reason.
A more recent phenomenon is the waning of the cachet of a “purebred dog”. When I was growing up, a registered-breed dog was something above what most people had. It was seen as a sign of affluence then. The AKC used to publish their annual registration statistics (I was a dog show fan in my youth), which were always going up, until maybe 15 years ago, when they stopped, without explanation. It was because those registrations had begun plummeting with acceleration. Non-dog-show people no longer immediately think of buying a purebred. Far from it.
More likely they’ll go to a rescue place, or buy a “hybrid designer dog” which is nothing more than a dog with parents of two different breeds, nothing that was in any way special before marketing got hold of the idea.
I think the word has got out that the AKC is not really a good thing for dogs.
On top of that it is a very elitist seeming organization.
Basically the things it valued have largely fallen out of favor.