I Take Issue With Some Of These So Called Dog 'Experts...'

Laurie

Laurie

Laurie

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12 Jan 2016
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Europe mostly, for now...
I'm not talking about internet/forum dog owners, but rather with the academics; especially when it comes to the Poodle of the breeds...

The Poodle.

I've owned dogs of various breeds all of my life, so I figure that experience must have some standing when it comes to talking about them. I don't claim to be an expert, just that I've owned and trained them.

Some experts claim that the Poodle is a relatively new breed when it comes to historical mention of them, and many make the claim that the Poodle must be a fairly new breed (middle ages) because the could not have survived in the wild. I beg to differ...

It's nonsense for the experts to claim that Poodles, and especially the Toy Poodle couldn't have survived in the wild. I happen to know, from first hand experience that Toy Poodles are fearless, reckless, feisty, natural born hunters, with a boundless energy and a sense of adventure and curiosity. Heaven forbid that my own TP should ever become lost, because whilst I know she would be able to find food for herself (there's not a living creature known to man that she wouldn't take on; she has absolutely no fear of cattle whatsoever, but I know that their temperament is somewhat sensitive also; and it would be that issue that would concern me the most).

However, when it comes to boldness she would not hesitate to bound up to, chase, try to catch, and probably eat if she were hungry enough, a small animal. And she ain't afraid of Cats either, no matter how big they are...

The initial downside to her getting lost would be that Poodles are extremely sensitive creatures, prone to picking up on atmospheres and tension. That would be my first and utmost concern for her; If your home is constantly filled with tension, a Poodle is definitely not for you, for your Poodle will absolutely become depressed. All dogs are pack animals, and as such could never really be happy in a lone environment; and especially not the Poodle. The Poodle needs that 'pack' around it; whether that be with humans or other dogs. However, having said that, my TP will happily roam my grounds for hours, quite alone at times, and even in the dark. I know she's safe within the grounds.

The Poodle has a sharp, and incisively keen intelligence. Training a Poodle results at all times in A+'s. The thing about a Poodle is that they are extremely clever at understanding commands from, even just from watching the eyes of the trainer. I kid you not! Different looks (whether from facial or eye expressions and without a word spoken is pooh easy to the Poodle). They're always more than willing to learn something new, and more than happy to please their owner, just as all dogs are; the Poodle just learns its lessons quicker. It took me a mere half a day to train her to do her business in the designated area of my grounds, whereas it's taken me several days to train the others to do so.

Sally Kinne, corresponding secretary of the Poodle Club of America, Inc. says in the article below: I don't think poodles ever did live in the wild!

The key words in that sentence are: I don't think! If she's such an expert there, she's not freakin' paid to think, but to know! She should at least know the rudiments of the Poodle mentality and instincts! I seriously doubt that she's ever had any real experience of owning a Poodle and/or of training one. This is the same with so many so called 'experts' on such issues. I know for an absolute certainty that my TP, if she were with a pack (because they need/must have the company) could easily survive in the wild.

I absolutely wouldn't want her to do so, because she's my 'baby.' But that's just sentimental human frailty when it all comes down to it. I'd worry about her state of mind, but never about whether she could find and catch dinner for herself.

Any theory that they emerged in the middle ages is just that; theory and speculation. Experts utterly ignore the evidence from bas-reliefs from 2000 or more years ago; and other circumstantial evidence of their origins (see second article link). It doesn't help the serious researcher whom keeps coming up with such rote theories. It's exasperating to say the least...

Bear with me, lol, I am getting to my question...

Poodles are excellent alert messengers, and can be extremely territorial of their own environment. But with good training they will know when to alert you, and when it's OK to sit back and relax. And that's another thing about the Poodle. They are so calming and relaxing. Easily and willingly biddable, and quite content when in relaxed mode.

It's also a complete fallacy to believe that Poodles (the Toy Poodle to be precise, is 'yappy'). That's rubbish! It may become so if one keeps it as a 'lap dog,' which is stupid, cruel and inhibiting to the natural boundless energy of the breed. My TP is not yappy at all. She has a distinctive and rather deep bark for a small dog, but definitely not yappy.

And don't believe the nonsense about Toy Poodles only needing 20 minutes a day for exercise. She can keep up with, and outrun the best of them, all day. Poodles (the Toy Poodle in particular) don't drink or eat a lot, and that can be worrying for first time owners of the breed. They're not fastidious (at least mine isn't when it comes to eating, they're just dainty eaters). They also sleep a lot too. All perfectly natural to the breed. They're gentle, loving, mischievous, playful, hardy, exceedingly intelligent, loving creatures. When you've felt the gentle, light feeling of a Poodles feet on your knee, your heart is instantly captivated, and lost to them forever.

Before I bought her, if anyone had told me that with owning two Retrievers already, I would be adding a Toy Poodle to the mix, I would have laughed; and it took me nigh on a year to come to a decision to include her with the other two. But she fitted in so well, and I was just as happy to don wellies and coat and run the pack without worrying that she would get hurt by the two Retrievers weight and size; turned out that they were the ones I should have worried about. lol.

My TP runs up to Cows and tries to offer them her toys in an attempt to get them to play with her. And they in turn appear to be amused, bemused, but also very gentle and protective of her. I've only gotta say the words: 'Your friends are here!' to her when the Cows come around, and she's off like a shot, very excited to go see and play with them. She's not at all afraid (I'm often more afraid for her than she is for herself).

The thing is, with any Toy Breed, they don't see themselves as only 10 inches high; or 'Toy.' All they know is that they're 'Dog,' and they react in exactly the same way as any well trained breed of dog would do. It's only the owner whom worries about it's size and boldness.

My only question, the one that really needs an answer to it, and for which I spend hours online searching for answers to, is; how did Poodles end up with wool for a coat, instead of the fur of it's peers? Was it at one time mated with a Sheep? The wool grows extremely fast on a Poodle, and has to be trimmed every six weeks. *blushes in shame at the times lapses that I go to sometimes, when 24 hours in any one day is simply not enough for me to get thro everything that is on my agenda* But so long as I keep her well brushed and combed, especially in the winter, my guilty conscience subsides a little. But I do wonder, inordinately at times, how the Poodle comes to have that coat. Why is it wool, and not hair or fur?

I'd really like to find something more substantial on the origins of the Poodle also, other than that which is shown from research from so called 'experts' and historians, but so far I have come up with a big fat blank; just theories and speculations as to their place among animals in ancient times; and a lot of diversity on opinions as to their origins.

The thought of wild poodles contending with the forbidding elements of nature makes us shudder. It's hard to imagine a toy poodle surviving torrential rainstorms or blistering droughts in the desert, or slaughtering prey for its dinner (unless its prey was canned dog food). Or even getting its haircut messed up.

For that matter, what animal would make a toy poodle its prey in the wild? We have our doubts that it would be a status symbol for one lion to approach another predator and boast, “Guess what? I bagged myself a poodle today.”

If something seems wrong with this picture of poodles in the wild, you're on the right track. We posed our Imponderable to the biology department of UCLA, and received the following response from Nancy Purtill, administrative assistant:

The general feeling is that, while there is no such thing as a stupid question, this one comes very close. Poodles never did live in the wild, any more than did packs of roving Chihuahuas. The present breeds of dogs were derived from selective breeding of dogs descended from the original wild dogs.

Sally Kinne, corresponding secretary of the Poodle Club of America, Inc., was a little less testy:

I don't think poodles ever did live in the wild! They evolved long after dogs were domesticated. Although their exact beginnings are unknown, they are in European paintings from the fifteenth century [the works of German artist Albrecht Dürer] on to modern times. It has been a long, LONG time since poodles evolved from dogs that evolved from the wolf.

Bas-reliefs indicate that poodles might date from the time of Christ, but most researchers believe that they were originally bred to be water retrievers much later in Germany. (Their name is a derivation of the German word pudel or pudelin, meaning “drenched” or “dripping wet.”) German soldiers probably brought the dogs to France, where they have traditionally been treated more kindly than Homo sapiens. Poodles were also used to hunt for truffles, often in tandem with dachshunds. Poodles would locate the truffles and then the low-set dachshunds would dig out the overpriced fungus.

Dog experts agree that all domestic dogs are descendants of wolves, with whom they can and do still mate. One of the reasons it is difficult to trace the history of wild dogs is that it is hard to discriminate, from fossils alone, between dogs and wolves. Most of the sources we contacted believe that domesticated dogs existed over much of Europe and the Middle East by the Mesolithic period of the Stone Age, but estimates have ranged widely—from 10,000 to 25,000 b.c.

Long before there were any “manmade” breeds, wild dogs did roam the earth. How did these dogs, who may date back millions of years, become domesticated? In her book, The Life, History and Magic of the Dog, Fernand Mery speculates that when hunting and fishing tribes became sedentary during the Neolithic Age (around 5000 b.c.), the exteriors of inhabited caves were like landfills from hell—full of garbage, animal bones, mollusk and crustacean shells and other debris. But what seemed like waste to humans was an all-you-can-eat buffet table to wild dogs.

Humans, with abundant alternatives, didn't consider dogs as a source of food. Once dogs realized that humans were not going to kill them, they could coexist as friends. Indeed, dogs could even help humans, and not just as companions—their barking signaled danger to their two-legged patrons inside the cave.

This natural interdependence, born first of convenience and later affection, may be unique in the animal kingdom. Mery claims our relationship to dogs is fundamentally different from that of any other pet—all other animals that have been domesticated have, at first, been captured and taken by force:

The prehistoric dog followed man from afar, just as the domesticated dog has always followed armies on the march. It became accustomed to living nearer and nearer to this being who did not hunt it. Finding with him security and stability, and being able to feed off the remains of man's prey, for a long time it stayed near his dwellings, whether they were caves or huts. One day the dog crossed the threshold. Man did not chase him out. The treaty of alliance had been signed.

Once dogs were allowed “in the house,” it became natural to breed dogs to share in other human tasks, such as hunting, fighting, and farming. It's hard to imagine a poofy poodle as a retriever, capturing dead ducks in its mouth, but not nearly as hard as imagining poodles contending with the dinosaurs and pterodactyls, or fighting marauding packs of roving Chihuahuas.


Read more at http://www.readersdigest.ca/food/recipes/when-did-wild-poodles-roam-earth/
Click to expand...

Here's an 'alternative history' in regard to origins of the breed:

The Poodle is one of the oldest breeds developed especially for hunting waterfowl. Most historians agree that the Poodle originated in Germany, but developed into his own distinct breed in France.

Many believe that the breed is the result of crosses between several European water dogs, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hungarian, and Russian water dogs. Other historians think that one of the Poodle's ancestors is the North African Barbet, which was imported to the Iberian Peninsula. After that, the breed arrived in Gaul where it was used for his hunting abilities.

It's also commonly believed that Poodles descended from Asian herding dogs, and then traveled with the Germanic Goth and Ostrogoth tribes to eventually become a German water dog. Yet another theory is that the Poodle descended from dogs that were brought out of the Asian steppes by the conquering North African Berbers and eventually found his way into Portugal in the 8th Century with the Moors.

Whatever its ancestry, this is a very old breed. Illustrations of Poodle-like dogs adorn Egyptian and Roman artifacts and tombs dating from the first centuries B.C. The drawings and statues show dogs that look very much like modern-day Poodles, bringing in game nets, herding animals, and retrieving game from marshes.


Read more at http://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/poodle#vR72IiiSujk1625d.99
Click to expand...
 
Laurie said:
Heaven forbid that my own TP should ever become lost, because whilst I know she would be able to find food for herself (there's not a living creature known to man that she wouldn't take on; she has absolutely no fear of cattle whatsoever, but I know that their temperament is somewhat sensitive also; and it would be that issue that would concern me the most).
Click to expand...


just to point out that kind of behaviour is in no way conductive to survival.

Not having any fear and taking on prey you cant hope to beat equals injuries which leads to infections, inability to hunt and eventually death.
 
A dog is a dog is a dog, but the real question you are wanting an answer for, is would you be satisfied if a dog walked in to the toilet and picked up you crap once you had deposited it? Nope, I didn't think so.
 
edited it for anyone who actually wants to know what the OP's point was:

My only question, the one that really needs an answer to it, and for which I spend hours online searching for answers to, is; how did Poodles end up with wool for a coat, instead of the fur of it's peers? Was it at one time mated with a Sheep? The wool grows extremely fast on a Poodle, and has to be trimmed every six weeks. *blushes in shame at the times lapses that I go to sometimes, when 24 hours in any one day is simply not enough for me to get thro everything that is on my agenda* But so long as I keep her well brushed and combed, especially in the winter, my guilty conscience subsides a little. But I do wonder, inordinately at times, how the Poodle comes to have that coat. Why is it wool, and not hair or fur?

I'd really like to find something more substantial on the origins of the Poodle also, other than that which is shown from research from so called 'experts' and historians, but so far I have come up with a big fat blank; just theories and speculations as to their place among animals in ancient times; and a lot of diversity on opinions as to their origins.
Click to expand...
 
I'm astonished at the speed of the replies; so obviously you've missed the point of my post, and the question that I asked. Sad that people can reply to a thread without bothering to read the OP, without really knowing what it's about.

There was a genuine question there, in fact two questions; C'est la vie...
 
Laurie said:
I'm astonished at the speed of the replies; so obviously you've missed the point of my post, and the question that I asked. Sad that people can reply to a thread without bothering to read the OP, without really knowing what it's about.

There was a genuine question there, in fact two questions; C'est la vie...
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the large rambling slightly "im in love with my dog" wall of text above the unrelated question puts people off.

and its not wool its simply, curly hair.


simple test take a strand does it stretch
 
Laurie said:
I'm astonished at the speed of the replies; so obviously you've missed the point of my post, and the question that I asked. Sad that people can reply to a thread without bothering to read the OP, without really knowing what it's about.

There was a genuine question there, in fact two questions; C'est la vie...
Click to expand...

Probably because it's an essay on a poodle.
 
Think you'll find the breed and its characteristics depended on a combination of factors throughout the centuries, decided by and changed in accordance with what was needed at different times.
I understand Poodles were originally hunting dogs, whose coat was bred in to help them when going through water - Pudel, "puddle", poodle, etc...
Mini Poodles were later bred for truffle hunting, so straight away there you have two very different traits borne of Poodles and other breeds...

So unless you chart the exact history and match that with what breeds' qualities were bred in at each period, there's no easy answer.
 
Laurie said:
Thank you Boycey; at least your post was pertinent to my intention.
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The answer to your question is not complicated. At one point in history, a dog was born (probably in Germany) with a gene mutation that caused it to have a different kind of fur, similar to wool. The owner obviously thought wool is cool so he selected the trait when breeding his dogs.
 
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