Humans Can’t Quit a Basic Myth About Dog Breeds
After four decades of training and studying dogs, Marjie Alonso has lost track of the number of pets she’s seen because their humans felt they weren’t acting as they “should.” There were the golden retrievers who weren’t “friendly” or “good enough with kids,” and the German shepherds who were more timid scaredy-cats than vigilant guard dogs. There was the Newfoundland (who later turned out not to be a Newfoundland) who had been adopted to fulfill a Peter Pan–esque fantasy of a devoted dog nanny, but acted so aloof that his owners put him on meds. And then there was the horde of Shih Tzus, acquired by a woman who was “super pissed,” Alonso told me, to find the little dogs regularly escaping her home and terrorizing her neighbors’ yards—nothing, she complained, like the regal pooches whose “idea of fun is sitting in your lap acting adorable as you try to watch TV,” as advertised by the American Kennel Club.
Alonso, who’s now the executive director of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants Foundation, gets it; she really does. Stereotypes about breed “personalities” are hardwired into almost every interaction people have with dogs: They influence which canines are adopted first, which are routed into service jobs, which are allowed to inhabit apartment buildings. Breed is one of the first things people ask about a dog, and the answer has a way of guiding how they’ll treat that animal next. Which is exactly the problem. “Any good dog trainer will tell you those stereotypes are a disaster,” says Marc Bekoff, a dog-behavior expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Breeds don’t have personalities. Individuals do.”
Maybe that logic seems obviousOf dogs’ behavioral quirks, much like those of humans, aren’t mere products of genetics or pedigree; of experiences factor in. Even Brandi Hunter Munden, of the AKC, which details breed personalities on its website, acknowledged to me in—a concept predicated on purity, sameness, predictability passed from parent to pup—is an undeniably powerful force in dogs. “I don’t think you’re ever starting from a totally clean slate,” says Gita Gnanadesikan, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona.
