People » Prick-Eared

The American Way

People, Politics, Ponderings 1 Response »

Feb 082012

There was an interesting discussion full of drivel on a dog forum filled with dog-mommies entitled “Does AKC Support Crossbreeding?”; however registering to respond to it seems to be a major drag. So instead, because countless of Europeans question why Canadians and Americans have so many dogs outside the major registries, perhaps it is better to explain why in the land of the free, people are free to make their own choices and why the American and Canadian Kennel Clubs, while they do not endorse nor recognize cross-breeding, lack the sufficient means to corral the general population.

It is quite understandable why someone who recently immigrated to the country has a hard time grasping the American way. After all, the continent is quite vast and Europe and Australia are tiny compared to the seemingly endless land. However there is a reason to all of this madness.

First off, do not focus on a subset of breeders. Consider the audience as a whole. A great number of pure-bred breeders are living out in the rural area; and with that there are events in life where pure-bred dogs cannot always fill in the niché, especially in the realm of working and performance dogs. Not everyone who is operating outside the registry are breeding “designer dogs”.

There is a reason why there are so many mongrels in North America. Firstly, it is actually quite common for ranchers and hunters to utilize cross-bred dogs. So it is unfair to ask everyone who manages cattle for a living, courses coyotes or pursues feral hogs to give up his or her hobby of showing and breeding pure-bred dogs because they have vested interests in other aspects of their lives. Whether it is mixing Catahoula Cur with Pitbull to improve their ability to physically hold a pig, or crossing in a Greyhound or Saluki with an American Staghound for managing coyotes as pests, or back-crossing a cattle dog derived from a Border Collie to Blue Heeler to work a new strain of cattle, many people have a practical reason for producing performance-bred mongrels. In addition, it is becoming quite common for dog-sports to be the arena of inventive nature with flyball opening way to winning Border-Jacks [Border Collie-Jack Russell Terrier mix] and Border-Staffies [Border Collie-Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix] leading while aceing the Frisbee championships; or Whippet crosses stealing the diving competitions where static breeds lacking innovations within the last 150-years are losing.

If the AKC or the CKC do not allow people to breed crosses outside the registry or even sell unregistered, then anyone who has serious investment in dog sports, agriculture, hunting et cetera will be pressed to forefeit either showing their purebred dogs or working alongside their crosses. The Kennel Clubs know they cannot afford to lose memberships, so the registries do not bother rocking the boat by forcing people into the “either or” position. It is both political and financial suicide for the Clubs to become anything more than being just a registry.

It is actually much wiser to enable people to have their little showing hobby on the side with FCI-recognized breeds, while allowing them to participate in other cruicial life matters which also involve dog-ownership. Otherwise, the registries will just collapse.

Just because someone is operating outside a registry, it does not means they will commit pedigree fraud or engage in other illicit activities; nor does it mean they are being unethical. If cross-breeding is regarded as unethical because of a few bad apples, then in the fairness of tits for tats, one might as well ban dog-breeding altogether since there are just as many horrific examples of pure-bred breeders committing great sins. Bad cases make for bad laws.

Ol’ Shep

Australian Shepherd, Collie, English Shepherd, Russian Mennonites, Sotch Collie 1 Response »

Sep 302011

Part of the reason why it is so intringing to read up on the history of the Russian Mennonites is because they were largely agricultural and the Anabaptist influences can be found almost everywhere in Canada. To the East, the Swiss-German settled down, which we now know them as Amish, Old Order, Old German. On the Prairies, the Mennonites of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union immigrated alongside the Hutterites; and to the West, the Dutch of the lowlands took up residence in the valleys. Most of them took up Canadian citizenship during the land rush from mid- to late-1800s.

On the Prairies, there is a joke going around about how everyone has a Russian grandmother due to the widely-accepted practice of pairing pierogi [trans. "dumplings"] and kelbassa [trans. "sausages"] for dinner. However the jab is a bit of a misnomer as most of the settlement blocks are either Swedish, Norwegian, Ukrainian or Polish at the very base of their foundation. The Russian exodus didn’t come until after the Second World War; and the bulk of it stems from the fall of the Soviet Union. So, most people are of mixed ancestry of German, Polish, Ukrainian and several others.

When people move, they tend to bring their dogs with them. For this reason, it is not unusual to find Jindos in the classifieds with the onset of Koreans immigrating to Vancouver. Whether or not the imported dogs have any staying power remains to be seen.

One of such effect is the German Shepherd Dog. They are fairly popular among chicken farmers as yard-dogs. However it is not plausible the early immigrants brought the dogs with them since the German Shepherd is a recently contrived breed at the turn of the 20^th century. It is more reasonable to assume the dogs were imported sometimes in the late ’20s, early ’30s; and later caught on among the German farmers simply out of ethnic pride.

On the other hand, if one goes through the archives at Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, they will see numerous photos of collie-types from the late 1800s and early 1900s predating the formalization of the Border Collies as a trial breed. What these photographs have to tell us have vast implications.

Click to view date and information attributed to the photographs.

If there were any dogs from central and eastern Europe, they were absorbed by collies and farm shepherds as those are the only ones left standing today. For practicality, we can refer to these dogs as American Collies or American Farm Shepherds as many strains were not recognized as individual breed until about the 1940s-1950s and afterward. It is from this genetic admixture stewed since the 16^th century onward with gradual infusion of dogs from all corners of the world, came fore the English Shepherd, the Scotch Collie, the McNab and the Australian Shepherds in the mid-20^th century. Since it was not uncommon for dogs to free-roam and to be unfixed, we can then infer this admixture as a new landrace as the morphology and personality of the dog were maintained through selection by their owners.

In fact, if one talks to the elders, the collies were the mainstay for hunting cougars and bears in British Columbia in 19^th and early 20^th century. The farm dogs were also expected to retrieve ducks and grouses or run rabbits, as well as guard the homestead, hold the hog and herd livestock. They were the go-to dogs prior to the rise of materialist culture and strong sense of individualism. The Labrador Retrievers were newly imported at the turn of the century, and the Canadian kennels did not procure a litter until around 1930s-1940s. Similarly, Coonhounds weren’t imported into the western provinces until about 1920s. Since farm shepherds persist as gundogs into the 1950s, it is clear what is now popular in dog sports of this decade were once strains only the affluent kept and bred. The strong emphasis on the value of pedigree papers from both trial and show breeders threw these working dogs into obscurity; but the Farm Shepherds are all but extinct as an all-purpose dog as one can still find the occasional rare Treeing Shepherds in the Appalachias. So it is best to be wary of claims a particular breed is best for a particular function.

If there were any dogs kept by the immigrants to the New World, it would had been collie-like in appearance with the working quality of a shepherd. Likewise, if there were any brought along with them from the heartland of Prussian and Russian Empires, they were cannibalized. Resistance is futile.

This is where the journey ends. If one wishes to learn more about the farm shepherds of North America and their faucets, there is a resourceful blog maintained by Andy Ward at Old-Time Farm Shepherd weblog. There are also oodles of resources added by owners and associations with a focus on Australian and English Shepherds.

Wolf-Killing Collies

Cascusian Shepherd, Central Asian Shepherd, Herding, Ovcharka, Russian Mennonites No Responses »

Sep 162011

In the journey to seek out the original dogs of the Russian Mennonites, and whether or not any drop of blood made their way to the New World, there were many conflicting sources as dogs were seldom mentioned. The only canines worth noting belonged to European nobles or to strange, alien cultures. The farmers were neither.

The English of the 19^th century often painted a bleak, grim, often crude picture of South Russia. Wolfhounds, presumably Borzois, were unleashed and oftentimes the nobility regarded any deaths of the villagers during the grand hunt as collateral damage in pursuit of their favourite game. Great wooly dogs were said to be foul, savage and ornery, who lived in the holes of the earth, attacking any peasants dared to venture near them; bones devoured. This reference is probably to the South Russian or Caucasian Ovcharkas. The method described of separating the sheep from the Ovcharkas is quite unusual– the landowners caged the beasts while tending to the flocks; and usually this required calling upon the mir [trans. "commune"] to entrap and hold them. However, it is important to note there is a strong cultural basis, as the early writers often paint the peasants of South Russia, nowadays Ukraine, as imbeciles who often fell victim to the wolfhounds and the great dogs of the earth; while the German farmers, assumingly Mennonites, were somehow untouched. Unfortunately, there seems to be a general conscience the Slavs were inferior in early modern English literatures.

Historically, the Mennonites had a close relationship with Khanates along the coastline of the Black Sea and into the Central Asian interior. However, in this context, the settlement of Molochna is intertwined with the Nogais. There the Mennonites and the Nogai Horde would engage in trade relations for six decades prior to the departure of the Khanate in 1860. The Khans did not particularly care for the Russians, and the Germans were isolationist pacifists. However since the pacifists and the nomads saw similarity in solitary life independent of Russian politics, they struck out a deal: in exchange for diary, grains and maintenance of the fields, the abandoned pastures would be rented out to the settlers during the seasonal migrations of the Khans.

What is really particular is the English revered the Khanates migrating to the Sea of Asov. The writers described three types of dogs: the greyhounds, most likely tazis, small pursue toy-like dogs which rode with the horse, and the livestock guardians; most likely Central Asian Ovcharkas. What is most intriguing is the pouch dogs were kept for good-luck; the hounds would kick up the rabbit or a wolf in conjunction with the killing blow of an eagle; and the cumbersome wolf-killing livestock guardians could actually herd horses and cattle.

Herd? The Ovcharka community considers herding as a fault. If dogs can herd, then it means they can’t guard. In fact, the easiest way to get on the nerves of enthusiasts is to suggest they can herd.

Confounded by the contradictions between historical texts and modern beliefs, an explanation was needed. Consulting with a few self-professed historians and behaviourists in the blogosphere, we came to the conclusion the livestock was bundling around the dogs and where the dogs move, the stock follows seeking refugee of the dogs. It is the most logical explanation: simple flocking behaviour. After all, this is what incomplete records tell us.

But what is this?

Or this?

Brad Anderson was kind enough to share a YouTube channel maintained by TOBETKZ. The featured dogs are a type of Central Asian Ovcharkas from Kazakhstan called a Tobet. The ones in the videos shown above are actively herding cattle and horses.

The behaviours of the Tobet go against what experts tell us. Even though herding is a modification of a predatory sequence and it is theoretically a liability for livestock guardians, it is curious to see whether the results of these behaviours lie more in what people expect from them, not a byproduct of attempting to rationalize how a dog should behave from the armchair. The blatant disregard for the notion of a livestock guardian which could fight wolves and feral dogs while moonlighting as a herding dog seems to be a Westernized ideal imposed upon the dogs in the muddled mythology pioneered by people who have a hard-on for the concept of a big mastiff-like dog as repurposed New Age estate guardians. This what these dogs do in their native homelands. No ifs or buts.

However these videos only provide a limited insight into the history of livestock guardians and herding breeds. While Kazakhstan is one of the few places left in the world where people remains nomadic, they are merely only a shadow of a society which once existed 150 years ago. They do not tell us what life was like two centuries ago. On the other hand, these modern examples do give us clues.

Nevertheless, I got my answers. Unfortunately, it is not the one I was looking for.

Images

Airunp. 2005. File:Kazakh shepard with dogs and horse.jpg Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kazakh_shepard_with_dogs_and_horse.jpg (accessed September 1, 2011). [Image: airunp, 2004]

Speculation: How Can The Way We Ate Define Our Dogs, Pt. I

Russian Mennonites 3 Responses »

Jan 172011

via flickr.com(Image: Barbara Martins Coelho, 2009)

It’s often said dogs are reflections of ourselves. I often wonder how working dogs are influenced by our societal needs, so oftentimes, I tend to look at the diet of the locals as well as their daily lives.

It’s easy enough to figure out what were the mainstays of the elite upper-classes who owned the estates in the United Kingdom; the powerful water dogs used by fishermen in Newfoundland; and which iconic dogs could be found among pastoralists in Central Asia; however there is little or no information that could be found which suggest a landrace, if any, my ancestors utilized.

My ancestors? The Russian Mennonites: the ones who originated in the Netherlands, found themselves in West Prussia, fled to the Ukraine under Catherine the Great then sought out a better life in Western Canada. So I always wondered what kind of dogs they owned, whether they brought the dogs with them or they simply bought from the neighbours. Sometimes I wonder if they brought the dogs with them on their perilous journey to Canada, as doubtful as it may be.

Supposedly, an English-German pictorial dictionary for Amish children, published in 1890, contained two drawings of dogs at the turn of the century. However Amish are of Swiss and Alsatian origins, and they settled in Eastern United States and Ontario in the 18th century. However the drawings do give us an insight of what dogs were a hundred and twenty years ago.

(Image cropped via etsy.com. Illustrator: Unknown)

The closest in living history I could relate to is in the 1950s and 1960s, my mother’s family had a shepherd-type, in which mom thinks it’s a German Shepherd, named “Nipper.” However that isn’t much to go on since German Shepherds were once considered as the perfect family dog back then. Instead, we are talking about 150-some years ago just before breed fanciers became prominent influence in modern puppy-purchasing. Long before Rin-Tin-Tin as well.

In absence of records of a descriptive landrace my ancestors could had possibly worked alongside with or found as companions, I decided to analyze the diet and the daily lives of the Mennonites in South Russia [present day Ukraine] between 1800s and early 1900s to see what kind of values instilled and shaped a dog.

via picasaweb.google.com (Image: Tom Ratzloff, Map of Molotscha Mennonite Colony in Ukraine)

There was a record in 1914 published by the Mennonite Historical Society of B.C. detailing the menu of a Russian Mennonite during late summer. Note the heavy usage of eggs and dairy. Obviously owning meat cattle was not in the best interest of the ancestral Mennonites; especially since if any meat was served, it is usually pork.

July, August, September
Sunday	Breakfast	White coffee, tea, fruit Platz^[1]
	Lunch	Roast mutton with fruit, potatoes, fruit juices, bread
	Fesper^[2]	Tea, fruit juice, rhubarb Platz
	Supper	Buttersuppe^[3], buttered brown bread
Monday	Breakfast	White coffee, fruit Platz, Ruehrei^[4]
	Lunch	Kjieltje^[5], fried ham, brown bread, watermelons, melons, Bulki^[6]
	Fesper	White coffee, white bread with rhubarb marmalade
	Supper	Cooked barley porridge, butter, brown bread
Tuesday	Breakfast	White coffee, Ruehrei, white bread, syrup
	Lunch	Green bean soup^[7] and Schnetki^[8]
	Fesper	Watermelons, melons, Bulki, syrup
	Supper	Buttermilk Mus^[9], buttered bread, eggs
Wednesday	Breakfast	White coffee, Schnetki, fried potatoes, brown bread
	Lunch	Rhubarb Mus, fried ham, brown bread
	Fesper	Watermelons, melons, Bulki
	Supper	Cherry Mus, fried potatoes, brown bread
Thursday	Breakfast	White coffee, white bread, marmalade
	Lunch	Cherry Wareniki^[10] with sauce (sunflower oil with cream)
	Fesper	Watermelons, melons, Bulki, butter
	Supper	Boiled potatoes in jackets with gravy (sunflower oil with cream)
Friday	Breakfast	White coffee, white bread, syrup, fried potatoes, brown bread
	Lunch	Rhubarb Piroschki^[11], thick sour milk
	Fesper	Watermelons, melons, Bulki, butter
	Supper	Sweet boiled milk with bread, Glomskuchen^[12]
Saturday	Breakfast	White coffee, white bread, Ruehrei, brown bread
	Lunch	Beans fried in onion fat, clabbered milk, brown bread
	Fesper	Watermelons, melons, Bulki, butter
	Supper	Armer Ritter^[13], sweet milk with bread crumbs

via mhsbc.com(modified for footnoting purposes)

In Roots and Branches, the editor noted: “150 chickens… …for summer, down to 75 in winter, by spring to 40;” confounded, she wondered where the chickens went.^[14] The thing is what Americans serve as “chicken noodle soup” has its roots within the Mennonites and the Dutch, and oftentimes my family would prepare this during the fall and winter to use up “old chicken.” Second of all, meat is usually seasonal. As farmers do inventory in the fall, they try to figure out how many they can sustain through the winter, butcher the ones who are not strong enough and keep the most productive ones for the spring. Thirdly, meat is often sold at the marketplaces to those who could afford such a luxury. Fourthly, if there was too much meat to be processed after the bulk was canned, frozen or sold– butchered meats were sometimes used to feed the pigs or the dogs. So I am not quite sure why the translator and the editor are speculating on records. Seems like a routine thing to me.

Either way, based on the records, under the assumption the Mennonite livelihoods’ were not centric around meat livestocks, we can conclude the dogs they kept probably were probably more along the line of doing simple field-to-field driving, guarding the livestocks, controlling vermin, and keeping the children entertained. This sort of lifestyle is consistent with the personality of the breeds originating in Central and Eastern Europe. Since dairy and eggs were precious commodities, we are probably looking at a livestock guardian dog or a herding dog with medium energy, but high guard awareness. We could also be looking at a catch-dog, however that is unlikely since pork is not an everyday occurrence.

However knowing farmers, it could be a random dog that was good enough to keep vermin off the land; or much to the dismay of the working-class breedists, the dogs could simply be “pets” to keep the women company in the kitchen and in the fields.

via flickr.com(Image: Alix Kroege, Chortitza Settlement 2006)

Footnotes

1. The equivalent to platz in the English-speaking world is the coffee cake.
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2. ”Platter.” Usually vegetables, the occasional fruits, cold cuts and breads make up a platter.
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3. ”Butter soup.” It’s a generic recipe which calls for roots vegetables with bits of herbs, a smack of butter and some cream.
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4. “Scrambled eggs.”
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5. Better known as kielkje, or “noodles.” This dish is usually made from a dough cut into strips and boiled in water.
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6. Polish loanword for “bread rolls” or “steamed buns.”
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7. Probably what we called jreine schaublezuppe.
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8. “Biscuits.” Any kind of biscuit is called a schnetki. Modern day useage of the word no longer resembles the curled up pastry borrowed from the Ukraine.^[Source]Schnetki is derived from the word German word schnecke, meaning “snail.”
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9. Being Deaf, I had a hard time figuring out what the author meant by “mus.” However since Plautdietsch lacks standardized spellings and the written language is usually read as pronounced, he probably meant mous, which is how my grandmother spelled it. It’s better known to English speakers as mousse.
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10. An East European dumpling made with wheat dough, usually stuffed with potato. Dumplings stuffed with fruits such as raspberries, blueberries, apples, cherries, plums were considered as dessert. In mainstream Canada and among Polish Americans, this is known as “pierogi.” “Pierogi” is a Canadian English corruption of the Ukrainian-Canadian word: “pyrohy.” Wareniki is probably a Plautdietsch adaptation of the Ukrainian word varenyky when the Mennonites settled in South Ukraine. There are numerous spellings for varenyky, but they’re all pronounced the same.
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11. “Stuffed buns.” Usually these buns are stuffed with vegetables, fruits or meat before being baked or fried. Transliteration of the Ukrainian word pyrizhky.
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12. “Cottage cheese cake.” Kuchen is German for “cake,” and gloms in Plautsdietsch is “cottage cheese,” supposedly borrowed from Polish or Russian.^[Source]Back to text

13. The North American equivalent to this is the French toast.
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14. Pork is and was the meat of choice among Russian Mennonites east of the Canadian Prairie provinces. Within the Prairies provinces, beef is the meat of preference. Although mutton is also mentioned, like chicken, it is probably more related to the season.
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References

Mennonite Girls Can Cook. “Authentic Schhnetki.” Accessed January 16, 2011. http://mennonitegirlscancook.blogspot.com/2009/05/authentic-schnetki.html^[8]

Price, Louise B. “The Way We Ate in 1914.” Roots and Branches 12, no. 2 (2006): 11. Accessed January 16, 2011. http://www.mhsbc.com/news/v12n02/p11.htm.^[13]

Thiessen, Jack. “Visitez ma tente.” Accessed January 16, 2011. http://ereimer.net/Thiessen/Talk-given-at-Madison.htm^[12]

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Footnotes

References