#tortora

[mayasphotography]

Autumn turtledove

How to support me: Ko-Fi page

[unteriors]

Strada Senza Nome, Tortora, Calabria.

[grison-in-space]

aiiieee my favorite dog breed book ever got delivered today! The Right Dog For You (Daniel Tortora) is well out of date today, having been published in 1980, but there's a lot to commend it in its approach to breaking down dog breeds that I wish we could update for today. Tortora broke down dog temperament into sixteen different scales and dimensions and then surveyed veterinarians, obedience trainers, groomers, and other animal professionals about their estimations about where each breed fell on each point. The book is full of tables like this one:

The attention to detail is just phenomenal. Every one of those scales comes with operational definitions of each and a description of what each level means, like this one for activity level:

Then each breed has a page where the author shows the range along each behavioral scale that most dogs of that breed fall within, along with some short notes. Some of the more popular breeds, like Toy Poodles, even have distinctions like "puppy mill" vs "well bred," with temperament ranges that vary accordingly. Here's the example for the Brittany:

I can transcribe these at request when I have a keyboard but right now I'm just nattering happily during an enjoyable activity, without much expectation that anyone will much care.

Woefully, 1980 is too early to have caught commentaries on cattle dogs--they wouldn't be recognized until 1985, IIRC--and of course the characters of several breeds have changed quite dramatically in the intervening 40 years. I bought the book more as a historical document than a guide, honestly, but I really wish someone would do something similar for the modern day. There are a few purported "honest guides to dog breeds," but nothing I'm aware of even close to this thorough, honest, and carefully cross checked against as wide a sample of people as possible. I've never seen anything else quite like it.

Anyway, I'm gonna have fun with this one. Let me know if anyone has any breeds they'd like me to hunt for as a sort of snapshot of temperament assessment through the 1970s.

[calabria-mediterranea]

Tortora, Calabria, Italy

[illneverbeapassenger]

missing him so bad

[mefssss-blog]

¡Lectura del día!

[akleatherware-office]

#akleatherware #barguzinsky #sobol #ootn #oote #sobolcoat #меха #мексика #шубанорка #шуба #шубы #дагестан #furcoat #luxuryfur #luxurious #furfashion #furstyle #furry #furries #pelliccia #womenswear #winterstyle #trenchcoat #boutique #фащэ #собака #собор #winterstyle #sablecoat #sable #tortora

[gentlementools]

Another great one by Barbanera