Prairie Mary sent us to this good Times article by Ted Kerasote on overbred dogs. I only wish he hadn't given even accidental credence to H$U$ on the way, but I expect his book, due out next year, will be well worth reading. Mary says: "l like this article very much. I'm hearing something similar about horses: that one of the values of the wild horses everyone either idolizes or complains about is that their genes are weeded by nature so that they constitute a pool of healthy, functioning genes we may need to dip into now and then. I wonder if there is a parallel in humans? Where are the wild humans?"
This is why primitive sighthounds forom aboriginal populations, like mine, are valuable, as are my friend Vladimir Beregovoy's Laikas. And I have been crossing free flying, hawk- evading ferals into my homing pigeon flock, as have friends in hawk- abundant Saskatchewan and BC, perhaps in part to keep our pigeons like becoming too much like Mr. Bennion's below, however fascinating they may be to the artist and geneticist...
Mary added in a later note: "Even at animal control in the Seventies, most of us hated fancy dogs. Partly because they had no sense. Partly because the dog shows always hired us for security and the people were goony."
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