Mongrels

Digger123

Digger123

Well-Known Member
Joined
22 May 2009
Messages
1,089
Location
in the hovel
Visit site
Can you still get proper old fashioned mongrels ? You know the heinz 57 variety ?
All pups I see for sale these days are either full pedigree or designer dogs labradoodles , sprockers, cockerpoo to name just a few.Why do they(labradoodles etc) command such a high price tag when at the end of the day they are just a crossbreed ?
When and if I decide to get another dog, I want an old fashioned scruffy thing and it will be a rescue to boot !
 
Yes, although I think they are harder to come by as people only want to breed "pedigrees" that have so many genetic faults, the mongrels that the likes of the RSPCA etc are trying to stop breeding, are actually much healthier and fitter.

Rescue centres are probably your best bet - I got a Staffi x Collie from a Rescue and she is the most amazing dog I've ever owned
 
I see lots in the city, mainly because there is still a huge problem with stray dogs, not just in New York, but in the South as well. Many are made available to rescue, and I believe that the good old mongrel is one of the most popular "breeds" in NYC.

Most are categorised as Lab/Pit/Shepherd mixes, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

I would say that Cousin Crow, my sister-in-law's dog (rescued from a roadside in Georgia) is a bit of a Heinz 57.

30usq5s.jpg
 
DSC02847.jpg
I have one
laugh.gif


Proper mutt is Tinks. Would think rescues would be the best way to locate one
smile.gif
Or theres usually some farm somewhere with a litter of indiscriminate muttlets
blush.gif
 
When I think back to the dogs in my childhood they were rarely taken to the vets,never had injections and weren't ill!
The only time I remember having to take kipper to the vets was when she escaped and got hit by a car and broke her leg.
I have had a dalmation and at present have a rottie. Dalmation - slipped disc just between her shoulder blades inoperable but we did manage to keep her going pain free for another 9 yrs.
Rottie - huge lump removed from behind her ear ,ear infections= operated on,skin infections the list is endless
This is why when the time is right I want a proper crossbreed as I think they are a lot tougher
 
Tink rarely has vaccs.
blush.gif
and apart from a urine infection last month, she's only been to the vet for things like having bits of her bitten off by various things she's tried to kill.
crazy.gif

My friends purebreds are forever going with tummy trouble, skin problems, heart problems.
frown.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
When I think back to the dogs in my childhood they were rarely taken to the vets,never had injections and weren't ill!
The only time I remember having to take kipper to the vets was when she escaped and got hit by a car and broke her leg.
I have had a dalmation and at present have a rottie. Dalmation - slipped disc just between her shoulder blades inoperable but we did manage to keep her going pain free for another 9 yrs.
Rottie - huge lump removed from behind her ear ,ear infections= operated on,skin infections the list is endless
This is why when the time is right I want a proper crossbreed as I think they are a lot tougher

[/ QUOTE ]

My grandmother had a white fuzzball mutt when I was a child, and the dog lived to the ripe old age of twenty.

My Boston terrier has been genetically sound--no joint issues, allergies, and a stomach of steel that once digested an entire pain au chocolat, much to my abject panic--but in the six years I've had her she has been to the vet's for:

Eating poisonous weeds
Getting her foot stuck in a door
Kennel cough
Breaking a toe
Pulling a neck muscle after being slammed by a Lab
Losing an eye to a head trauma after being slammed by a dog into a staircase
And then this weekend she was a passenger in a van doing 50mph that crashed and resulted in various minor injuries

I am going to buy her a suit of doggie armour for 2010
grin.gif


Actually, while some pedigrees are poorly bred, I think the unhealthiness of modern dogs has much to do with over-medication and terrible commercial feed. My grandmother's dog, as I recall, lived off meat, bones and vegetable scraps.
 
My first dog only used to get a bit of chappie and scraps.Gasp we used to let it lick the butter wrappers.the cardboard outer on the ice cream there wasn't much he didn't get.He lived well into his twenties.Old age was his demise not illness.
I still miss Pooch, best dog ever
 
[ QUOTE ]
Jess is a cross breed. (sorry I prefer that term to mongrel--she'll get upset)
wink.gif

She is a collie cross something or other!
februarysnow20095.jpg


[/ QUOTE ]

Jess is lovely, and seeing her picture solidifies our theory that Crow is part Border Collie (she also has a tendency to "talk" and run in wide arcs in the woods).
 
Thank you. I think she is gorgeous but beauty in the eye of the beholder!!
But as the original post is discussing, she hasn't really had any major health poblems. Touch wood, she's hardly ever been to the vet except for a recent irritation problem. (not fleas-we ruled that out.)
 
As I understood it when I was younger, a cross breed was a cross between 2 pedigree dogs, and mongrels were the result of a mating between 2 crosses, i.e. more mixed up back ground. I am sure there are plenty about still but I think the rescue centres etc tend to call them all crosses nowadays. Most adverts say collie x, terrier x etc, I often wonder how they know this, particularly if the dog is a stray.
confused.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
When I think back to the dogs in my childhood they were rarely taken to the vets,never had injections and weren't ill!
The only time I remember having to take kipper to the vets was when she escaped and got hit by a car and broke her leg.
I have had a dalmation and at present have a rottie. Dalmation - slipped disc just between her shoulder blades inoperable but we did manage to keep her going pain free for another 9 yrs.
Rottie - huge lump removed from behind her ear ,ear infections= operated on,skin infections the list is endless
This is why when the time is right I want a proper crossbreed as I think they are a lot tougher

[/ QUOTE ]


From what my mother have told me about her relatives when she was young, out in the countryside, when animals weren't useful any more, be it dog, horse, cow etc, they were usually shot. So thereby you also could say about those animals, that they were rarely taken to the vets.



About mongrels being innate healthier, according to Per Erik Sundgren (he is a government agronomist and have some other title involving doing research in heredity) it only works in the first cross between two purebreds. As I recall, if you cross a first generation cross breed with a third breed, you have a statistically much more unpredictable result (as in looks and temperament) but inherited diseases could also turn up.



Personally I don't believe you can compare mongrels without owners, where truly only the fittest and "luckiest" survives and gets to breed/manages to raise her puppies, with mongrels being owned by people, e.g. usually if you breed a mongrel, the owners still chooses the stud dog, feeds the bitch properly etc.

Not to mention that owners of mongrels that I've met in real life have had a tendency to talk widely about their innate healthy mongrel and then when you're just about to change subject they say things like "Of course he has had trouble with his prostate but all men, both dogs and humans, gets that."

All men, really? Well of course then it doesn't count as a health problem...
a015.gif
 
I think ours is a mongrel!
Ours is prob a collie/ whippit cross but cant be sure!
She's the most intelligent thing ever and im sure she has cat somewhere in her as she likes to sleep on whatever you'r reading or on laptop keyboard!

dogs002-1.jpg

Shes a bit older now and her face and body have lenghtened but shes not got much higher!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top