What is the Dog's Name?

That's funny because almost all the "purebred" dogs I've seen in person, whether registered or not, look like the dog they're supposed to be. The only real exception I've seen personally is with two Siberian Huskies we boarded at the first boarding kennel I worked at in high school. One was really tall and lanky, and one was short and looked more like a small Alaskan Malamute. Otherwise, aside from mixed breeds, all the "purebred" dogs looked like what they were supposed to be. Even with the difference between the 2 different German Shepherd versions(German and American), they still look like German Shepherds(albeit the American ones with the major slope look like German Shepherd aliens,, but they still look like a German Shepherd). Mutts that have more than 2 breeds in them or who you only know what the mother was are hard to guess at. I will concede that. Even with the variation in Chihuauas(sorry, don't know how to spell that breed), they all looks like Chi's.

I have a German Shepherd mix who looks like a German Shepherd and most people think he is just a German Shepherd, but he's not. The shelter that had him actually got him and his siblings from a previous adopter who didn't get his dog altered and his friend "happened" to come visit with a dog of the opposite sex and we know what happened. Anyway, one parent was a Shepherd and one was a Shepherd mix, so my dog looks mostly Shepherd and because of that everyone assumes he's a purebred.

Most dog breeds have a general look about them that makes them easy to identify(unfortunately, the majority of people don't identify dogs by look, but by color, hence why everyone assumes my dog is a purebred), so those that know dogs can typically tell the common breeds apart regardless of if they look like other dogs. I have a co-worker who doesn't know the difference between a Labrador Retriever and a Golden Retriever as he just recently adopted a Lab mix and was telling me one day that she looked like a mini Lab(he showed me pictures and she does look Lab) and the next he was telling his nephew(who also works for us) to tell me that "right, Daisy looks like a mini Golden Retriever. No, she looks like a mini Lab. Goldens, though they have a similar body type, look different and have longer hair than Labs. Same goes for my Aussie, people who don't know the breed "assume" she's a Border Collie without a tail. I had a co-worker at the kennel I mentioned that had a black tri Aussie and was at PetSmart one day. A lady asked him if his dog, Simon, was a Border Collie and he said no, he's an Australian Shepherd. The lady actually argued with him that his dog was a Border Collie instead of admitting she didn't know what an Aussie was and then going and checking them out for herself. I have an Aussie/Border Collie mix, she'll probably get mistaken for a Border Collie also once she's fully grown because she has a tail, though she is a blue merle(which is more common in Aussies than Border Collies) so who knows what most people will think she is. Right now she looks like both, an Aussie and a show type Border Collie, the only real difference from my Aussie, aside from her having a tail, is that her ears are bigger. Heck, my mom had a Great Pyrenees and a lot of people actually asked her if he was a St Bernard????? Seriously? St Bernards don't come in the color he was and their heads alone are twice as big as a Pyrs.

With puppies, it can be hard to determine the breed in mixed breed dogs, but some stand out, like my mom's Shapei/Pit and possibly German Shorthaired/Wirehaired(as some pups had more wiry hair than others)Pointer mix. When she was a puppy she had a Sharpei head(still does). There is no other breed of dog that has the same head as a Sharpei so there is no doubt there, but the rescue, specifically the foster that had her, refused to acknowledge that until later in her life when my mom sent her a picture and she did say "you're right, she does look like she has Sharpei in her." With some particular breeds that look similar, it is indeed hard to identify them unless you really know the breed. Like with Border Collies(show quality meant), Aussies and the English Shepherd. They all look similar enough to each other to most people that they could be mixed up. I've only ever personally seen one English Shepherd and she was a puppy so I couldn't really compare her to my Aussie, just in all the pictures I've seen they look like Aussies. I'm not denying the old time dogs looked different because I know they did, I'm just saying that most breeds have specific looks to them that people who know the breeds can identify.

And about the gene thing, I actually heard this on a documentary, but obviously couldn't post it here even if I found it, but I found this on a website that says the same thing: "They took a whole large collection of dogs, 900 dogs from, I think, 80 breeds," Ratliff says. "And what they learned was that in these dogs, if you look at their physical traits, everything from their body size to their coat color to whether they have floppy ears, it's determined by a very small number of genes."

Found on this website: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/22/145604966/dog-gone-genetics-a-few-genes- control-fidos-looks














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