HanktheDog Blog

Unlike humans, we canines don't think we're all created equal. Me, I tend to be polite to just about any dog. Still, I don't feel particularly submissive to (or even interested in) that Mini-Pinscher dancing around my heels. Though I do grow rather carefully respectful when some big ole Wolfhound decides to sniff my behind. We dogs know equality is overrated and that figuring out our position in the pack is something we've got to pick up quickly if we want to avoid having our fur fly.

But, the downside is that there are just so many differences to figure out if you're a dog, and for this I blame my breeding-crazed biped brothers. They've been shuffling our DNA like a pack of worn playing cards for thousands of years now. The result?

"The incredible physical and behavioral diversity of dogs - from chihuahuas to great danes - is encoded in their genomes," said Prof. Eric Lander, the senior author of a new report on the genetic code of dogs. "Of the more than 5,500 mammals living today, dogs are arguably the most remarkable," he notes. (Well, we agree about that!)

So now they think our doggish diversity will help them figure out exactly which genes are responsible for what. Pretty soon I expect they'll find the frisbee-catching gene and the housebreaking gene and don't-chase-the-cat gene and start putting them all in our dog chow or something. See, I don't much trust scientists, whom I consider several notches spookier than your run-of-the-mill veterinarian. They seem just too intent on slicing, dicing and pureeing our canine genetic code. I guess there aren't enough different breeds of guinea pigs, so they've got to run their instruments through our genetic code like Mike runs his fingers through my fur looking for ticks.

That makes us all Labs now: genetic laboratories in which humans can explore the most basic components of our doghood, satisfying their primate curiosity and looking, as always, for new tools to wield against the natural world. I hope it pays off for us dogs somehow. Maybe a natural resistance to kennel cough? The end of hip dysplasia?

Still, I worry. If old-fashioned humans broke our ancestors down into hundreds of different breeds, think about what new-fangled future humans might do. Please, scientists, be more humane than human. Don't fuse our genes with those of cats, squirrels or birds. Being a social animal is already plenty tricky for us diverse domestic canines. An alpha dog that squawks like a parakeet would be just too much to bear.

[By the way, The Bark has links to a number of articles on whole dog genome gig].