On the other hand, if our guesses about my mom’s dog are correct, a German shepherd-Beagle cross produces a very handsome dog.
If the two original parents are true purebreeds, then all the pups in the first generation will look the same (for instance, every labradoodle will look just like every other labradoodle). But if you then breed two of those “designer breeds” together, you can get almost anything: The offspring could look just like either of the original parent breeds, or like one of the parent breeds in some characteristics and the other in others, or an intermediate between the two in some, or pretty much any combination of the traits of the parents that you can think of.
And, in fact, the way you turn one of those “designer breeds” into a real breed is by deciding what standard you want for the new breed and culling the dogs that don’t fit your standard. If you do this through enough generations, the dogs will breed true.
So, there must be some mad genetic scientists out there who have tried something like the following:
artificially inseminate a female St. Bernard, Great Dane, Wolfhound or Mastiff with the sperm of a male Chihuahua, Papillon or Bichon Frise. If someone can point me to pictures of the progeny I would be vastly interested.
Does anyone know about how many generations that would take? I guess ultimately that would depend on how many different traits you incorporate into the standard of the new breed, and how many traits are shared by the two parent breeds, but a ballpark figure for typical values?
Like I said in the OP, artificial insemination will probably be involved.
Well, no. Puppies are supposed to have really large heads. It’s when it’s an adult dog that has a Shepherd head and a Corgi body(yes, that’s what the one I saw looked like)- ‘freaky’ might not be the best word, so let’s just say “strange”.
Interesting, looking into that a bit more, it looks like the Labrador retriever was not one of the breeding stocks that went into the development of the Golden (or at least, not a pedigreed one), despite having pre-existed the event. I would have thought the breeds would be fairly closely related.
I’ve seen chihuahua/medium breed crosses (from not necessarily particularly small or good-looking chihuauas), and they look like mutts, mostly, unless the other breed is something with a distinctive appearance. Chihuauas are kind of “generic dog, only really small”, and they don’t have that many distinctive features. I’d imagine a wolf/chihuaua hybrid would look equally nondescript.
This is really not true. Most dog breeds are not perfectly genetically homogenous, and crossbreeds can vary quite a bit between individuals, even within the same litter. Labradoodles, for instance, show significant variation in coat texture, curliness and length; some look a lot like curly-coated retrievers while some look more like old english sheepdogs and some just look like heavy-bodied poodles.
Well, the modern Labrador didn’t really come about until the 1880s itself. Its ancestor was the St. John’s Waterdog (as was the Newfie.), and St. Johns Dogs were referred to sometimes in England as Labradors, but they were different than modern Labs.
However, the breeds are closely related, because one of the dogs that went into the Golden Retriever was the Wavy Coated Retriever. The Wavy Coated Retriever was a cross between the Lesser St. John’s Dog (the father of the modern Lab), and a setter. So, the Lab is the Golden’s uncle, in a sense.
My folks had a dog that was half German Shepherd and half Beagle. I don’t think anyone would have described her as “handsome” but she was wonderfully good-tempered.
Funny looking animal - Beagle face and ears, Shepherd coloring and Shepherd body. Beagle legs - she looked like a low-rider.
Tail…well that must have come from a beaver or something, it was more like a paddle; she didn’t really wag her tail but rather her entire rear end would go into Full Wiggle Mode.
Bowser has a beagle face and German shepherd body, too, but his legs are well-proportioned to his body. And he’s not nearly as waggy as my first dog growing up, a vizsla/presumed lab cross. He is wonderfully well-behaved, though, and is absolutely devoted to my mom.
Years ago, at work, I was talking to a guy who breeds German Shepherds and I said to him, “I have worked out the perfect dog breed, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Pit Bull cross. The temperament of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with the looks of a Pit Bull.”
