Dog breeding and self determination

According to the highly scientific, probably largely accurate, Animal Planet or Discovery Channel or Dog Channel or whatever special on dog breeding the other night, my golden retriever should be an athlete — compulsively chasing sticks and balls and small animals and diving into any body of water to retrieve theoretical ducks or just swim around.

My dog doesn’t identify with that dog. My dog lives in retriever drag.

Rather than judge by genetics and extrapolate to behavior, we went the other way. Assuming, as breeders apparently do, that genetics defines behavior, we mapped her level of and type activity, personality traits and depth of characteristics such as bravery in the face of the evil UPS guy, thunder and the monstrous toy chihuahua next door.

We’ve decided she’s a mix: half chicken, half carpet.

Twenty-two hours sleep a day. Twenty-one when she's on deadline. And the only time we really saw her run hard was at a parade when an honor guard fired blanks for a salute.

She dragged Mom for half a mile before stopping to hide behind a tree.She loves to ride in the car, but only sticks the tip of her nose out the window so she doesn’t have to face the wind. She was once frightened by a squirrel. She is offended when other dogs sniff her butt, when she even lets them get that close.

Her relatives were theoretically bred for retrieving. She either doesn't know this, or doesn't care. I rolled a ball to her in the kitchen last night. She watched it approach and moved out of the way.Wave a stick until she’s interested, then throw it and she’ll go get it, lie down and chew it into pieces. She’s a StickHound.If she were born human it would have been into a family of athletes and outdoors people. While they were out scaling El Cap she'd be back at the hotel trying to get room service to deliver to her layout by the pool.

Other than cuddling, panting and wagging when you come home, and keeping you company by following you around with toenails clicking until it feels like you're being stalked by a tap dancer, her greatest contribution is to warm up the floor one dog-sized chunk at a time. She works very hard at this. Mostly with her eyes closed.

Personality trumps genetics.

Another example: people directly descended from me are capable of doing math with letters in it. Unselfconsciously. I, on the other hand, count "one, two three, many, lots."

Probably the dog can, too; but it’s a lot of work, so she doesn’t.

Score: Science 0, Self-determination 1