I don't make a lot of personal posts so please bear with me. #Rufus hasn't been doing well for the past week or so. I mean, he's 13 (at least), and has slowed down due to age, but the past week or two he's been acting like every movement is a Herculean effort. A few times in the past couple of weeks his rear legs have given out on him completely to where I've had to pick him up and carry him which is, in itself, telling. Rufus has always hated being carried and struggled continuously when I did so. Yesterday while petting him I noticed two golf-ball sized things up under his chin. Now, they may be benign lipomas as Rufus is covered with them (one one each thigh, one on each shoulder, one on his chest and a few smaller bumps here and there) or they may be indicative of something else. I'm no vet and aside from emergency medic battlefield training I have no medical experience whatsoever, but these new things seem to be where your or mine lymph nodes are located....
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But yes, Yay Happens, there is also a level of learning involved, but without those innate skills that were bred into the dogs over centuries there is no foundation to learn from.
Maybe the future of finding certain species is to find the breeders who participate in the Gun Dog Hunting shows and stuff?! Those instincts are so important! I can't imagine having a retriever that doesn't retrieve or a hound that doesn't track. I can't even wrap my head around that!
I use BCs as the example because they were only recently allowed to join the AKC as a breed because there really is no breed standard for them: breeders were breeding BCs to herd, so they didn't care if BCs were black and white, brown, blue-eyes or amber; they didn't care if the ears were erect for floppy, the fur was long or short, etc. All that mattered was whether they would and could herd.
BCs come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors: http://www.colliecorner.com/01intro.htm but the AKC wants a specific breed standard for them.