In last week’s “Worth a Glance” section, we featured an article from The Washington Post with the headline, “Looking for a well-behaved dog? Breed may not tell you much.” An observant AHD Bulletin subscriber who works for Best Friends Animal Society pointed out a supportive article in The Atlantic and the worthwhile reading of the original study to put things in greater context.
Source: The Atlantic, April 28, 2022. Link. Breed is one of the first things people ask about a dog, and the answer has a way of guiding how they’ll treat that animal next. Which is exactly the problem. “Any good dog trainer will tell you those stereotypes are a disaster,” says Mark Bekoff, a dog-behavior expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Source: Science, April 29, 2022. Link. To investigate how genetics align with breed characteristics, Morrill et al. sequences the DNA of more than 2000 mixed breed and pure breed dogs.