The French bulldog is now the second most popular breed in America. Their cute features, portable size, and physical features make for a dog that can easily travel and doesn’t require a lot of exercise. But these characteristics sometimes have a detrimental effect on the dog’s health. Tove K. Danovich writes “Rather than requiring human owners to change their lives to accommodate a new dog, the French bulldog is a breed that’s been broken to accommodate us.” Historically, dogs were bred for functional reasons, not aesthetics. But evaluating a breed based on how they accomplish a task is tricky, leading to the rise of visual standards more easily judged. As breed standards were formalized, purebred dogs grew in popularity and became a luxury of sorts; but with a limited genetic pool, this popularity naturally led to a lot of inbreeding to maintain breed consistency. Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
There is something odd about rescue dogs, or a market that values used and often damaged products over new products in form of bred dogs. Some of it has to be marketing -- the idea of your rescuing a cute dog from certain death at a kill shelter. As if dogs had emotions beyond what their natural biology tells them to do to meet their needs like food and shelter.
You have to wonder how much of the rescue business is a fraud -- if the value of rescue dog, especially boutique breeds, continues to rise, there is going to be unscrupulous breeders that are going to be selling dogs to rescue businesses as "rescued" even if the only place the dog was rescued from was on paper.
We love to tell dogs what to do, but we rarely consider whether they understand what we’re saying. Pet owners assume their dogs comprehend commands like sit, stay, or heel — even play dead and make me Instagram famous, for that matter — but without the ability to read their minds, no one can know for sure. An ingenious new study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, however, finds a way to determine which of our commands they actually understand.
Recent studies have found an increased presence of a tapeworm infecting coyotes, foxes, and rodents across the Canadian province of Alberta. The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Led by the University of Calgary's faculty of veterinary medicine, the findings state that a parasitic tapeworm called Echinococcus multilocularis is now prevalent in Western Canada, including in urban off-leash dog parks in Calgary.
The tapeworm was first recorded in the area in 2012, and has long since been common in Europe. The tapeworms have also been present in wildlife found in Ontario, with the latest research suggesting the parasite has been present in the region for decades - now well established.
Echinococcus multilocularis is spread through the feces of coyotes and foxes that have eaten infected rodents such as mice and rats. Tapeworm eggs can be passed through their feces, which poses a risk to other animals that come into contact with it - including humans. Domestic pets such as dogs and cats can contract the parasite through contact with coyote feces or by also eating infected rodents. The worm can then be passed on to people via fruit, the handling of contaminated soil or through an infected pet’s fur.
Dogs, more so than almost any other domesticated species, are desperate for human eye contact. When raised around people, they begin fighting for our attention when they’re as young as four weeks old. It’s hard for most people to resist a petulant flash of puppy-dog eyes—and according to a new study, that pull on the heartstrings might be exactly why dogs can give us those looks at all.
A paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that dogs’ faces are structured for complex expression in a way that wolves’ aren’t, thanks to a special pair of muscles framing their eyes. These muscles are responsible for that “adopt me” look that dogs can pull by raising their inner eyebrows. It’s the first biological evidence scientists have found that domesticated dogs might have evolved a specialized ability used expressly to communicate better with humans.