>>Just as a point of information, there was a giant breed of dog called the
>>Molosser in ancient Babylon,

And just to correct myself, nobody knows what the Babylonians
called them, Molosser is a more recent name.  While Kaare does
not begin to know as much about the giant breeds as Christopher
Habig or Douglas Oliff, he has obviously picked up a lot from both
of them plus some reading on his own from sources of varied repute.


>I don't doubt that different canids developed different traits well suited
>to their environment. Nor do I doubt that humans would be quick to take
>advantage of this added "tool".

Yep.

>However, I still think that today's large
>breeds, with their relatively recent changes, can't really be used to
>prove/disprove any ideas about protein and growth. (Back to where this all
>started). :) IMO, while naturally large breeds may have been perfectly
>healthy, today's breeds of many dogs are not even very much like they were
a
>hundred years ago.

Mastiffs have changed a LOT in the last ~15~ years, where people
who had a lot to gain ($$$) by creating a trend (bigger and bigger
and bigger, which is the easiest kind of mastiff to sell to the ignorant
-- and ignorant buyers are easy to sell to and don't make waves)
started tight line-breeding on certain lines to get the size.

Twenty years ago, an adult male an honest 200 lbs was rare, yet
from these seriously over-used lines bred foremost for size, it is
now more common to get females 180 lbs and males 240.  These
breeders have produced so disproportionately many dogs, the gi-
gantic ones are now common. As long as you don't care if the dog
lives in chronic pain and dies at five, it's a great improvement over
the size range that was right for them for thousands of years..... My
early mastiffs (born 18-22 years ago) lived 11-13 years.

The big-name breeders in my breed have selected for medical
gigantism and the dogs suffer for the choice of greedy humans.

Although I have had a few big ones (bred for soundness, the size
was a surprise) I now have smaller mastiffs (my girls and a 3/5 scale
but perfect runt male).  They grow much more slowly, like the old-
time dogs did. It was 22 years and an outcross to a line of bigger
dogs before I had my first case of Osteochondritis (Dx'd last week).

My "little" mastiffs are the size that was NORMAL for the breed 20,
50, and 200 years ago and beyond.  I figure anyone who sneers at
their size is only proving the profundity of their ignorance and that
they care more about their own egos than the wellbeing of living,
sensitive creatures.

Medical gigantism is fraught with problems, and a normal diet
may not be safe for anyone suffering from gigantism.  However,
my "small" healthy sound mastiffs eat almost nothing BUT meat
and bones raw, and the occasional veggie meal (like children,
they don't LIKE their veggies) and they grow slowly and evenly,
take longer to get there, but thereby have an excellent chance of
living longer than the (by now 5 years at best) breed average.

>As for the chihuahua........... I wonder if it tastes like chicken??
<VBG>

Wonder if it tastes like guinea pig? <vbeg>

I used to excuse the chihuahuas for their nasty temperaments by
saying if my family had been Sunday dinner for hundreds of years,
I might act evil too.   Then I decided that was BS, and there is no
excuse for reproducing nasty animals on such a crowded planet.

>Marisa- who, having been cornered more by small dogs than large, finds them
>eminently suitable for punting... and not much else.

You may have something there. Chis get so fat for their frames (a by-
product of having been raised as a food animal), they DO tend to
resemble footballs, don't they?  Hmmm.

laurie (Mother Mastiff)