disproportion

Disproportion - Absence of proportion, symmetry, or proper relation. Correct physical structure is important; in the field of contruction structurual soundness is imperative. It takes hundreds of people, sometimes millions of dollars to get it right. Great care is taken to ensure structural soundness; typically accomplished with highly experienced engineers. A building is either structurally sound or it flawed.

So what the heck has happened to our dogs. Luke has a neck injury again; I'm not sure what he has done but it is a reacurring issue. He was not doing anything out of the ordinary but it may have been his nail biting lastnight. He likes to bite his nails but when he does this he contorts his neck into a weakened position. I first noticed in the evening, he seemed a bit off. When my son arrived home he never left his side, he seemed to need assistance of some sort.

This got me to thinking about what we are doing to dogs. There is a correct physical structure for a dog; and by dog I simply mean dogs as a species. What we have done by creating individual breeds that fall outside of this structural soundness has created weakness. Take the Dachshund, Corgi, English Bulldog, brachycephalic breeds (flat face) and the German Shepherd. All of these breeds have been compromised structurally.

The long breeds have back problems, the stout body of the English bulldog has agility issues along with the fact that it whole respiratory function has been weakened by reducing the length of the muzzle. The German Shepherds with the severely sloping rear angulation are faulty. They have lost the structural soundness in their hind ends, it is all physics.

When I watch an American bred GSD move it makes me cringe; it's painful to just watch. It may look cool in the ring but it a great injustice to do to a strong animal. Just imagine if there was someone designing humans and they decided to give us a nice curve in our legs. It might look nifty but it would take away the strength in our legs.

Dogs were meant to run, hunt, dig and kill with ease. Our basic guideline for the structure of dogs should be the the wolf, fox or coyote. The fox has a slightly longer body than the wolf but not so much that it causes structural weakness. What if we gave our legless dogs some legs, our muzzleless dogs some length of face or some strength back into the rear of a German Shepherd? Would this be so awful, we would still have all the different breeds. The only difference being that these different breeds would all be structurally sound.

Okay, I'm done venting.