u/windy_summer

For reference he's a micro content at ~9 percent and a year and two months old. I took him on a long walk yesterday and had quite a few people stop me to see him/ask what he was, and two people mention wolf. I immediately said GSD and Malamute mix as those are his predominant breeds, but I'm very anxious as of late because I'm in a no-no state and picked him up as a puppy off the side of road. Should I be worried, or is it just me seeing him as more wolfy because Im paranoid? Does he mostly pass as good ol' regular dog ?

She's being rehomed in a no no state and I'm concerned she's wolfy, if the general consensus is yes I might grab her. To me her face looks especially wolfy with the ears up but I've only ever been around my very low content dog!

The science is absolutely NOT in favor of cosmetic amputation, even in "working" dogs.

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The puppies most definitely feel the pain: https://www.bva.co.uk/take-action/our-policies/tail-docking-in-dogs/

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The pain persists and the puppies literally shriek and whimper, and pain is actually WORSE because they're puppies: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6028921/

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The nerves can try to go back and cause lifelong issues:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4772368/

https://www.petmd.com/dog/procedure/tail-docking-in-dogs

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You're actively disrupting and ruining your dogs ability to communicate:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2777283/

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Your dog might become more aggressive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking\_(dog)

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And the "injury protection" myth is utter bullshit:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4772368/

https://phys.org/news/2010-06-tail-injuries-dogs.html

https://bvajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1136/vr.b4880

https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/avma-lit-review-dog-tail-docking-1124.pdf

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So unless anyone can counter with real studies and science that somehow disapproves all of this, tail docking is cruel and there's no ifs and buts about it.

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Hi all, I have a very strange question. I've got a malamute husky shepherd mix (mostly mal and husky) and I think he'd honestly excel at some sled work if I could try and introduce him to it. He really needs a job, and If anything I just want to try it and see if he could do it. Anyone know anything? I'm willing to drive a bit. Thank you!

For context none of you thought he was wolfy lol

A low content wolf dog!!

I thought this was important to mention and dedicate a post to it for anyone searching for information, whether to make a point or just inform themselves. When I try to Google this, it can sometimes be difficult to find the appropriate literature, and I make it a point to back my stance with evidence. So no, the public isn't delusional in identifying pitbulls.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8819838/?hl=en-US - This is one of the largest and most definitive studies on the topic, testing 919 shelter dogs. It found that the false positive rate was only 1.5%. This means if staff visually identified a dog as a pit bull-type, it was exceedingly rare for the dog to have zero American Staffordshire Terrier (or related bully breed) DNA.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.13.249805v1 - The authors analyzed the thresholds of visual identification and confirmed that visual calling rates are highly reliable when a dog's AST content is above the 25% to 38% threshold.

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S109002331500310X - This study concluded visual identification was unreliable primarily due to poor inter-observer agreement (staff disagreeing with each other on the exact breed mix of the same dog) and low sensitivity (missing dogs that did have pit bull DNA but did not look like it) However, looking closely at the data, the specificity (the ability to correctly identify true negatives) for individual assessors in the study ranged from 52% up to 100%. To clarify, specificity of 100% means that some individual assessors had a zero percent false-positive rate. When these specific workers looked at a dog and labeled it a pit bull, they were entirely accurate; they never accidentally labeled a dog with zero bully DNA as a pit bull.

My guess is gsd and husky but lately he's felt less shepherdy to me so I'm questioning an even 50/50

getting him to be still was a challenge