Dogs are likely descended from a common ancestor of the modern grey wolf, and the Taymyr wolf. Pointy ears are thus doglike.
Other than that, i agree.
I’ve never had a dog. I’d say yellow lab.
Taxinomically, perhaps, but not archetypically. Floppy ears are by themselves almost enough to identify a creature as a dog, and should therefore be considered part of “most doggy”.
Usually when someone says “dog,” I picture some kind of Beagle or pointer, like something out of a Regency hunting print.
However, there’s a folk tale a friend of mine tells when he performs, and though the dog’s breed is never mentioned, I always picture the dog as a Basset. I have no idea why.
As a generic I’d assume a mid-large short haired dog with pointed ears that fold over. Brown in color. Generally I’d expect a mutt over a specific bread.
A lab is what i see in most generic silloette style signs.
Partly from my own dogs, and in part due to classic Thurber dogs, it would have to be the Labrador retriever.
After going wild for enough generations, most dogs seem to look like this.*
*i.e. the dingo.
For looks, the most generic specific breed of dog is the beagle. That’s a dog that just looks like a dog. Floppy ears. Short hair. Blotches of color. Normal proportions. Medium size. Sad eyes. Cross a beagle and a Labrador and you’ve got concentrated generic dog.
Our last dog looked like a very large German shepherd and the dogs we have now are border collies, so those are what I would picture.
The ugliest dogs to me are Boston terriers, pugs, azawhaks (sp?), British bulldogs, and bull terriers. The rest are either cool- or funny-looking. An example of my idea of a funny-looking dog would be those Chinese crested dogs, or sharpeis, or chihuahuas which to me look more like rats than they do dogs.
German Shepherds are what pops into my mind as well. I had lots of German Shepherds and Shepherd mixes growing up but that can’t be the reason because we also had many other types as well. I know intuitively that it isn’t a Shih-Tzu, Doberman, Standard Poodle, Chow, Samoyed or even Malamutes that I have also owned. I think mainly in terms of the breeds closest to the wolf/dog line but firmly on the dog side of the line. German Shepherds look fairly similar to wolves but they still clearly dogs in appearance and behavior. Malamutes are dogs too but many of them are almost indistinguishable in appearance to some wolves at first glance.
Beagles are good, but they’re a little too small to be the standard. Now, my mom’s old dog, that we think was a cross between a beagle and a German shepherd, that was a dog.
And it’s really bugging me now, because I can’t find a picture of him. I know that Mom took a really cute picture of him once, and I have all of the digital pictures she ever took backed up on my computer, but it’s tough finding one specific picture out of thousands. And then I remembered that he got his picture in the paper once, and I searched up that article online, but it was only available in an archived version that didn’t include that picture.
I have two dogs that just scream “I’m a dog!!!”
Charley is a black lab and German Shepherd mix. 50 pounds of mostly lab shaped body, with a little bit of brownish and grayish fur mixed in with the black. Lab shaped head and face.
Mollie is a Border Collie and Chow mix. She has a collie face shape, collie fur, in a 42 pound body. From the chow she gets all black fur and a partially black tongue.
Subspecies are subjective. There is no authoritative body to objectively determine how many there are.
But every subspecies is a member of Canis lupus, so it really doesn’t matter. As for which is “directly” related to dogs, the more we learn about dog evolution, the more complex it is. Dogs and wolves did not diverge at some point never to interbreed again. It would seem that as dogs spanned out across the globe with H. sapiens, genes flowed back and forth with whichever wolf populations they encountered.
Shepherd mix / retriever mix mix.
Longish hair - longer that a shepherd, floppy to semi-floppy ears; symmetrical brown / black / white coat pattern; brown eyes; 60 - 90 not terribly muscular pounds; long narrow snout; gait with paws swinging freely; and that doggy grin.
Eight years ago I wanted to get a dog. My husband agreed, as long as I got a dog looking dog.
In his mind this apparently was mostly a size thing. Dogs are sized 45-75 pounds. Smaller things may claim to be dogs, but do not meet my husband’s standard for dog. Larger things may also be dogs, but are in actuality small ponies.
I got the most dog looking dog I could find. Not surprising given my husband’s definition and the responses in this thread - he is a 60 pound “German Lab” from what we can tell, probably Black Lab and German Shepard. His hair is short, his ears are floppy and soft - lab ears, but his slimmer - like a shepherd with shepard coloring.
The only thing undoglike about him is he HATES water.
Hah, I love the small pony comment, I ended up having a Siberian despite the fact I wanted to originally rescue a malamute. She vetoed the idea because she didn’t want to have a dog that weighed more than her.
Note that the dogs that are most dog like to me, the spitz which are one of the older breads also tend to dislike water. Well OK only if the water touches their belly.
I do agree that there may be debate about the subject however the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature is pretty much the accepted authoritative body in the US as far as taxonomy goes.
I think of any of the spaniels. Dogs were bred for work and to help men to survive.
https://s.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/465/media/images/t2/English_Springer_Spaniel_5580811.jpg
The least dog like breeds are the ones with ridiculously long hair. They can’t survive in the wild because it gets so matted and painful.
I disagree with almost all of Chronos’ criteria - surely the most doglike dog would be that phenotype of dog that is overwhelmingly most common, worldwide? I’m of the opinion that pariah-type dogs are the most doglike dog - they’re certainly what comes to mind when I think of “dog” - Africanis, in particular.
I think french bulldogs are the ugliest breed, and dachshunds are the least dog-like dog.
Not actually what I think of first when I hear ‘dog’ (that would be a large mongrel like the one I grew up with), but the most archetypally ‘doggy’ breed, to my mind is the Doberman - undocked and uncropped, in their natural state.