If you were talking about your average dog breed, you would be correct. However, all of the dogs in this photoset are sighthounds which are physiologically very different from other types of dogs and naturally thin. I donât think any of them are emaciated for the following reasons:
1) Bits of skeleton should be visible on a healthy weight sighthound. If several ribs, the tips of the hips, and some of the spine are NOT visible, then the dog is overweight. Sighthounds are not Labs, and itâs unhealthy and unnatural for them to have anything more than a very minimal layer of body fat.
To use a real life example, hereâs my own Italian Greyhound when he was overweight:
For anything other than a sighthound, he looks to be pretty healthy and even slim here. However, at this weight my vet/boss recommended running bloodwork on him to ensure that he wasnât hypothyroid and then put him on a diet if everything came back okay (and it did).
Here he is now at a healthy weight:
Notice that several ribs, his hip tips, and some spine are showing. By ânormalâ dog standards, heâs underweight, but by sighthound standards heâs ideal, hence the most recent body score he got from a vet was a perfect 5.
2) If these dogs were actually emaciated, they wouldnât be able to run, much less compete in a sport like lure coursing. Dogs that are starving are lethargic, not capable athletes. For the past several years, Iâve been working at a vet clinic that often gets referrals from local animal control, meaning itâs not uncommon for us to see dogs that are severely neglected and emaciated. These dogs are always lethargic and sometimes have trouble just walking; in some cases, they are so weak that they have to be syringe-fed while holding their heads up because they donât have the strength to lift them. There is no way a dog that is emaciated would have the energy to run hundreds of yards at 45 mph, which is what dogs involved in coursing do.
3) Dogs that are emaciated have NO muscle tone, unlike the dogs in this photoset. A body that is starving cannot produce muscle; it devours it for nutrients as it struggles to stay alive. Here is a post containing graphic photos of what an actual emaciated sighthound looks like.
4) The only dogs in this photoset whose ribs are clearly visible are Azawakhs, which have an even more naturally thin physiology than any other sighthound. Azawakhs are special among sighthound breeds in that they have âdryâ muscle, which lays more flat against their skeletal structure than that of other dogs, meaning much of their skeletal structure is visible on a healthy weight dog. Itâs just how they are. Quoting the AKC breed standard:
[An Azawakhâs] bone structure and musculature are transparent beneath fine and lean skin.
And the FCI breed standard:
Particularly slim and elegant, the Azawakh sighthound gives a general impression of great slenderness. Its bone structure and muscles show through thin and dry skin.
5) It is very difficult to tell whether a dog is underweight from a single photo. I made a post illustrating this on my personal blog because I have two sighthounds and get accused of starving them from time to time by misinformed people. In particular, the photos in this photoset arenât great for judging the weight of any of the dogs because the poses are so extreme, stretching skin and muscle to their absolute tightest over the skeleton. Whether the dog is taking a breath, whether the dog is hot or dehydrated at the time the photo was taken, and the lighting of the photo will also affect how thin they look. Of course, in any photo where there is obvious muscle tone, that immediately rules out emaciation anyway.
6) Even if these dogs were emaciated, thatâs still irrelevant to whether lure coursing as a sport is cruel or abuse. It would be the choice of the individual owner that is cruel, not the sport (which participants spend money on rather than earning it, by the way). It would be a really idiotic choice though if the owner wanted their dog to win, since as previously discussed, starved dogs donât make good athletes. It would be like a racecar driver showing up at a race with an empty fuel tank and two flat tires!
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