Thats exactly what the test breeding was about. Both of these breeds had mastiff in them, and the odd shaped legs with the turned in elbows they both possessed supposedly came from 2 different sources. I may still have the book.
As with almost every other possible combination of breeds, this cross has a cutsey-poo name: “bully basset.” An image search for bully basset turns up nothing that looks very much like a St. Bernard. There are several pictures of different bully bassets on this page. To my eye, the only one that looks vaguely like a St. Bernard is Jackson, and the resemblance is slight.
All are rather short-legged too, except for maybe Waffles, and none seem near the size of a St. Bernard.
A very disappointed St. Bernard bitch.
So a small male dog can impregnate a large female dog…
…if someone puts him up to it.
Just don’t let it near a Taco Bell.
My chihuahua just told me he didn’t care how big the bitch was he could satisfy her!
It’s sort of like inserting a straw into Lake Michigan.
Says the disappointed St Bernard
My serious guess would have been that, assuming a combination which allowed for mating and gestation (small father and large mother, or large mother and small father in vitro with a large surrogate mother), the offspring would still be nonviable due to too many gross differences in traits (organs missized for the rest of the body, say). Just because they’re the same species doesn’t mean that every male can produce offspring with every female.
But it looks like that’s not the case. Huh, interesting.
“Liver alone, boys. Cheese mine.”
I bookmarked that for weirdness and future reference. The dog is cute, by the way.
We have no proof that the dog depicted is in fact a Chihuahua/St Bernard crossing, though.
However, I’d have assumed that it was possible. I know nothing about foetal growth, though, so maybe you’re right. Or maybe organ size will always be proportional to the overall size of the animal. Does someone know?
I think most size traits are multifactorial, that is, they are influenced by more than one (probably many) genes. Size won’t display a dominant/recessive pattern, so that crosses end up being intermediate between the parental types. The development of organ systems proceeds through feedback loops, so that organs will generally be in proportion to overall body size and to other organs.
There was an excellent National Geographic in 2012, early in the year, on the canine genome. It turns out that, in contrast to most natural differences, the heavy breeding of dogs for (a) specific traits and (b) the ability to pass those traits on reliably has led to a vary narrow set of genes (around 50, I think) that determine basically every quality that distinguish dogs. I can’t remember if it includes size.
Speaking of size, here’s the toy breed of the original article.
My dog’s father is a 3lb male Chihuahua and her mother was a 180lb female Saint Bernard.
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Welcome to the Dope!
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Might you have some pictures to share, mate?
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Hi, Opal!
Zombie dog! Aaacckkk!
I like post #7 though!
I have met a rather bewildering number of dogs fathered by dachshunds on much larger bitches. They all seem to look exactly like the mother but with cartoonishly short legs. Funniest was the dachshund/chow mix, that was comedy on four feet. Dunno what it is about the dachshunds but they seem to have one helluva smoove line.
Deep departed Barry was my friends’ dog, a black Lab/dachshund mix. All black, big lab head and big body, all on short legs.
Unless it’s just a thimbleful.