Just a Farm Dog?

To many farm people the farm dog is as much a part of the farm as the cattle, corn, soybeans or hogs.  The February issue of National Geographic had an article about a study of dog DNA.  Unfortunately, I could not find this part of the article on line, but it was the most interesting to me.  They divide all breeds of dogs into for different genetic groups.   Dog breeds have been selected for certain characteristics that their owners have found useful in making human lives better.  The 4 groups are:Wolflike, Herders, Hunters, and Mastifflike or guardogs. 

While each breed has some DNA from each group and some of the breeds are very mixed in grouping, some of the breeds in each grouping are interesting.  In the interest of quick reading I will concentrate on the herders that are most directly related to agriculture.  Some herders include Tibetin Terrier, Lhana Aspo, Pekinese, Shih Tzu, Irish Wolfhound, St. Bernard, Greyhound, Collie, Shetland Sheepdog, and Whippet.  A standard P\poodle is known as a hunting dog, but it also has a good bit of herder DNA.  Old English Sheepdog is more of a hunter than a herder.  A German Shepherd has mostly Masstifflike DNA.  That one really struck me odd as we had a German Shepherd mix that was a pretty good cattle dog.  I guess one conclusion might be that even though we train certain dogs to do certain things, it is not always in their DNA as much as we think.  There is a lot of interesting stuff about dogs on the National Geographic Web site.  Check it out.  The most common breed of dog is not a breed at all.  It is the mutt.