All Dog Breeds is a canine blog that was created to disseminate truthful and quality information about all the dogs in the world. Those that are of race and also those that are mestizo. Those races that exist today and those that unfortunately no longer accompany us. Our main objective is to provide you with information about the care, nutrition, health, training, exercise and hygiene that each dog requires. We will also provide you with reviews and recommendations on which products to use in each particular house and we will teach you some information about the history or origin of each breed, curiosities and physical and personality characteristics that each one of them has.
Classification of dog breeds
Purebred dogs can be classified in several ways. The most used in the canine world and on which we will focus to organize the content of this website are the classifications by size and by function. The size classification is based on the average weight and height of each breed. The classification by function is the one used by the FCI or International Cynological Federation and groups the breeds taking into consideration the original jobs and functions that each breed fulfilled.
Canine size classification
The classification of dog breeds by size takes as a reference the weight and average size of the dogs that compose it. This classification has five large groups. Giant breeds, whose specimens weigh more than 50 kilograms. Large breeds, where the weight ranges between 25 kilograms and 50 kilograms. Average or medium breeds whose specimens weigh between 14 kilograms and 25 kilograms. The small breeds that vary between 5 and 14 kilograms and the smallest breeds of all that are the toys whose weight is less than 5 kilograms.
Canine classification by type or function
The canine classification by type or function takes as a reference the use that was given to each breed of dog historically. There are more than 500 breeds that exist today. The FCI recognizes 343 breeds of dogs and structures them into 10 groups.
Once the number of canine breeds that coexist with humans and are recognized by the various canine federations, it is time to emphasize an important event. Who got to whom? Have you ever wondered if it was the man that got to the dog or was it the dog that got to the man? Next we will give a brief historical summary about this event. On how this great friendship between dogs and humans begins to form and on how the races arose.
How did the relationship between the dog and humans arise?
The reasons and motives for how the dog came to the human and how the human at the same time came to the life of the dog have been the subject of much discussion, theories, speculation and conjecture over time. To begin to explain each of these theories, we must take into account one fact. Dogs have lived with man for many years. There are studies that assure that it does more than 30,000 years. In turn, it is also important to consider that the behavior and structure of dogs have their origins in their wild ancestors, wolves.
Taking into account these data we can begin the explanation of what is supposed to have happened and how humans and dogs became inseparable friends. Konrad Lorenz, a distinguished Noble Prize in Medicine for his studies in animal behavior in 1973, wrongly claimed that the dog was derived from the jackal and the wolf due to their planetary lineage and location. A few years later he withdrew his assertions and in an honorable act acknowledged his error to go on to affirm that the ancestors of dogs were wolves.
One of the possible theories that revolves around the emergence of the dog-human relationship is what is known as Imprint Theory. Imprinting, Imprinting, Die-cutting or Printing, various names have been given to this theory. It is a theory known as pure Darwinian and raised by Lorenz in one of his books. In them he explains that the prehistoric man wandering through the fields stumbled upon a den full of wolf cubs and that far from reacting violently he was moved. He took the dogs to the cave where they lived with other humans and one of the women suckled the cubs. It is there where the impression of the image of the human being occurs as a maternal image submitting to him. This is how Lorenz explains it in his books.
«Almost by chance, man found wolf cubs in different places and opportunities that imprinted the human image as that of their maternal species. This is how dogs arose »
Konrad Lorenz
The theory would have closed if it was complemented by affirming that the multiple and hypothetical cases that occurred in different parts of the planet continued later, over years and centuries. With crosses directed according to the man's needs or the abilities discovered in his recent new friend. It was in this simple and romantic way that it was tried to explain at first the genetic variability of the dog, the more than 500 breeds that exist, ductility, meekness and submission. Aspects that define this animal as the human's best friend.
Another version tells that the wolf was the one who approached the man and for convenience helped him to hunt, enhancing the actions of both. The man began to notice that the presence of the wolves suited him and he associated him with his hunts, rewarding the wolves with the remains of food from what was obtained from hunting. This was how a perfect deal was sealed in which the wolf helped hunt the human and shared the loot. Until now, it would seem that man acted by chance and observation and that the animal accepted. But it was a lot more complex.
A married couple of North American-born biologists, Lorna and Raymond Coppinger, came up with a very interesting and clever twist. According to this couple, the wolf approached the man tempted by the remains of food that he left, as a result of his hunting. In this approach, the wolf population was divided into two groups; one made up of the bravest and meekest members of the pack at the same time. Who approached the man freely, calmly and peacefully in order to feed on remains. And secondly, another more timid and reticent group that maintained a more notable distance from humans.
The man exercised over the group of wolves with which he had the most contact, a directed selection according to what he was interested in achieving. With the passage of time, this reiterated procedure was determining specific characteristics in the offspring, which in the future would be those that accentuated the own and distinctive bases of canine breeds.
According to the Coppingers, a spontaneous selection of wolves occurred first, which naturally divided into two groups: on the one hand, the brave ones who approached humans and on the other, the more timid ones who kept distance from them. On the first group, those who were closest to man, the human being acted selecting and raising many of them. The second group always remained wild.
It was thus that man's first contact with the dog originated, and this is also the way that over the years the various breeds of dogs emerged according to human tastes and needs.
So far we can understand how the circuit was that allowed to give rise to the dogs, but it was not yet clear how from the wolf, of pure colors and mimetic with the environment and erect ears, it was possible to pass an animal of different sizes, of Such varied colors, different voices (the wolf does not bark although it has been proven that it can learn to do so), folded ears and pendulous.
All this led to an animal with special characteristics that were increasingly remote from the wolf. The answer to all the questions that we mentioned would end up giving the Russians in the middle of the Cold War, complementing the North American theory. Dimitri Beliayev and his wife (the "Belayeva) worked in a fox farm where obviously the coats were all uniform with a majority of surly animals. However, they observed that there was a more tame, more careful group of animals that approached the human being without fear and on them they worked together for more than 10 years (40 generations). Crossing tame animals, they noticed that structural and physical changes were associated with that meekness, such as hair color, the shape and position of the ears, fitness, the reproductive cycle, etc.
This study explains the same phenomenon in dogs. That is to say, meekness, the beginning of domestication, also involved a new tame fox or a quasi-dog. Today the explanation of how man came to the dog or rather how the wolf came to man and ended up becoming a dog and his best friend is based on these bases. Sealing between them an agreement in which the man proposed to feed that beautiful animal, companion and faithful as if it were one more member of his family. In return the dog provided not only companionship and fidelity, but also night protection, help in hunting or other jobs. That contract was signed more or less 30,000 years ago and to this day it continues in force despite everything.
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