Dogs are experiments in applied genetics

You may recall our dog, Eleanor, a.k.a. the Dire Floof. She definitely has “domestication forehead“. Despite looking pretty darned wolf-y at times. I dearly love this dog, but I take one look at that photo — or watch her literally shake the stuffing out of a formerly-sturdy dog toy — and I think, yowza, I’m glad she’s on my team. We did an Embark DNA test and of Eleanor’s 8 great-grandparents, 4 were Great Pyrenees (50%), 3 were German Shepherds (37.5%), and one was a McNab (12.5%). I hadn’t heard of McNabs before; they’re a herding breed specifically bred for the hot, rugged conditions of California ranches. The Embark results showed her siblings and cousins broadly distributed across Southern California — we ran into one at a dog park and it was like looking at an Eleanor clone. So I’m reasonably certain that there’s a breeder around here somewhere who is deliberately producing these dogs. I wonder if the dash of McNab is included in hopes of improving their heat tolerance. For…