Not All Dogs Come From Breeds

An article (here) about a vet who did some voluntary work for the Soi Dog Foundation in Thailand and then took two rescued street dogs back home to the USA with her interested me for a what on face-value may seem a trifling issue. The article describes the dogs as “basenji mixes”. 

The basenji is a primitive type dog from west Africa similar in many ways to other primitive dogs such as the New Guinea singing dog and the dingo. Although best known as a wilderness dog from Australia, the dingo actually originates from south-east Asia where it can still be found living as it always has done as the archetypal village dog with a very close relationship to people but it invariably gets overlook and dismissed as a mere stray. The number of pure dingoes in south-east Asia is declining thanks to interbreeding with the influx of domestic dogs but they can still be spotted quite easily by anyone interested enough to look.

When people see stray dogs such as the two in this article they always try to fit them into known “breeds” but (fortunately) dingo isn’t a recognised breed so these dogs were labelled with whatever seemed closest. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these two dogs are actually dingo mixes, thousands of which are already running around Thailand’s streets, rather than basenji mixes from west Africa (and I can say that without even seeing the dogs!). The reason for the wrong label is that we do not recognise the fact that many dogs around the world come from blood lines outside of the classified breeds. We arrogantly assume all dogs come from our breeds but it’s time to appreciate the independent dogs, like dingoes, who have not had their breeding directed by us. To my mind this would be a giant step towards appreciating free-living dogs as an acceptable part of our world.

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)