Dog hypothetical

[nancylebov]

If there were dogs bred/genetically engineered for healthy longevity, would you want one? Pay extra for one? Would you care if they didn't have a distinctive look?

This question came out of a discussion with a friend who's into futurism, but imho doesn't understand pet owners--he doesn't think there'd be much of a market for longevity dogs. On the other hand, maybe I don't understand pet owners, so let me know one way or the other.

My question about the distinctive look is based on the assumption that if you're optimizing one group of traits, you probably don't get to be picky about other traits so longevity dogs will probzbly look like small or medium-sized mutts. The other reason I'm interested in the effect of no visual markers is that you don't get automatic bragging rights by having what looks like an expensive longevity dog. I'm assuming that they'd be small or medium-sized because I've heard that large breeds tend to be short-lived.

Alternatively, if the tech exists to make longevity dogs, maybe it'll be in place to give them a distinctive appearance as well.

My notion is that you could tell whether you're getting a longevity dog by having the puppy tested before you buy it. If you've fallen in love with the puppy but it doesn't have the longevity gene(s), it doesn't cost as much.

Comments

[wouldyoueva.livejournal.com]

I sure would. I've had to tell Dave twice that his dog died, and it sucked each time.

It would be a small dog. I read somewhere that dog longevity was inversely proportional to size.

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer a longer-living pet. Less heartbreak in life.

[clstal.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're right (on what they'd look like). The research I'm going off of was done by a husband wife team and who was interested in a sort of 'natural' dog (read the book a long while ago, facinating enough to buy, but I'm not near it to look up the authors- copenhagen maybe?) - the book is called 'Dogs'. :-)

And, I can tell you that history backs up your friend's guess that there wouldn't be much of a market. There's not. All the weird stuff we breed dogs for currently makes em more prone to weird genetic and physical diseases, temperment from 'quirky' to downright unstable.

The 'natural' dog found by the above team was garbage-dump dwelling, thin and deep-chested (but not tooo deep chested) with short blah color hair, average head and moved comfortably (I'm killing their thesis with my terrible restatement so I'm gonna stop now). They did a ton of work with optimal body shape for different temperature needs - the chest needs to be deep and of moderate thickness, but past a certian stockyness you have problems with cooling. Also, related side note - they did a bunch of work with alaskan sled dogs and I remember the incredible importance placed to me, on something stupid -- toe hair. There was a very definate middle range where the dog's feet were protected from ice and snow but ice didn't collect between their toes.

Anyway -- cool research.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I suspect that presently you can do equeally well on longevity by either getting a mutt or by getting a medium-sized not-weird-looking purebred from a breed that's never been popular. I don't know which breeds maet those specs.

The fact that a lot of people get dogs with bred-in health problems doesn't prove that there's no market for longevity dogs, any more than the market for silly clothes means that Land's End can't make a living. On the other hand, Land's End isn't a huge thing compared to less practical clothes so I suppose it depends on what you mean by "not much of a market".

By the way, I'm assuming that there haven't been any huge breakthoughs in the understanding of aging, so you get a dog that lives for maybe 30 years, 25 or more of them in good health. I'm basing this on human families that are currently being studied--there are families where there might be four siblings over 90, all of them in pretty good shape. They don't seem to do anything special to achieve it, either--they just have good genes.

[clstal.livejournal.com]

Mutts are good -- mutts can also be bad on the same stuff 'pure' dogs are bad on. (Structure, temperment, longivity).

Your best bet, if this was something you were serious about producing (a best all around because you could get that in a couple of years vs longivity which you'd need many many generations for (and you'd need to wait to breed till they were older, probably) would be to take two vaguely similarly put together purebread dogs that met all your criteria for health and breed em and take one of the puppies. Or, then take the puppy and breed it to another of one of your two original breeds so you end up with a dog that's 3/4 one 'pure' thing and 1/4 another 'pure' thing. This is REALLY common in flyball circles because there's only one criteria - performance - no one cares much for pedigree. Performers get their line continued, no matter what they look like -- since they're breeding for a really specific criteria, the dog is in my opinion, barely fit to live with because those same criteria don't make good housepets unless you live with a ravening horde of children who are willing to spend their days entertaining the dog. :-)

In Europe, there's a top agility competetor (male, spacing on his name - that he's male eliminates most of the pool :-) ) who has his dogs specially bread for him to compete with -- they're a specific belgin line with something else, perhaps the german GSD?

I guess I'm saying that the time and cost investment of breeding such dogs wouldn't bear out in the short term (since there's no way to test for longgivity you'd have to breed and then wait and then go back and cull the lines that don't live as long -- very time and animal intensive. Even as a research project, it'd be damn hard to fund. There'd be NO way to fund it based on pet sales (pet sales by halfway responsible breeders aren't profitable now, for recognized and publicized breeds).

The optimal size for dogs appears to be 15 to 40 pounds.

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

Really small ones don't tend to do that well either. Of the large dogs, the greyhounds tend to live longest (10-12 years, sometimes a bit more). Very small dogs probably have less reserves; the very big dogs' hearts tend not to scale along with the body.

Parrot genes in the mix? I'm not sure why they live so long.

Re: The optimal size for dogs appears to be 15 to 40 pounds.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've heard there's a corelation between longevity and traits that make you not a prey animal--size, intelligence, flight (bats are amazingly long-lived), poison, armor. You can't optimize all of these at the same time.

I haven't heard anything about how the larger birds live as long as they do.

I was assuming that the longevity dogs don't have anything difficult done for them--they just have the best dog genes and maybe a few minor tweaks.

They've gotten a 20% improvement in mouse longevity by increasing an anti-oxidant in the mitochondria.

Re: The optimal size for dogs appears to be 15 to 40 pounds.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Most of the red setters we've bred or owned have lived to 12-14. A couple have made it 16, like mine who died last July. 16 years is too short. I miss my dog.

I would definitely opt for a longer lived mutt - a companion that true should be around as long as you are, ideally.

[avram]

You’re both forgetting something even more fundamental: Given enough people plus a worldwide communications-and-shipping system, there’s a market for everything. (OK, we also have to assume that most of those people have spare wealth, and access to global markets.)

Assume that only one person in a thousand wants a longevity dog. That’s six million people right there given current population levels.

[cellio]

Assuming that longevity comes with health (rather than, say, a 20-year fight with cancer at the end), I'd be happy to have a longevity pet. Less heartbreak, as others said. But I wouldn't pay for the feature, because as a matter of principle I don't pay for pets while there are shelters full of perfectly adoptable pets.

(I'm generlizing to pets, by the way, because I'm a cat person, not a dog person.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Interesting point--people like you might be a sizable proportion of those who are sensible enough to want a longevity pet.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

If my dog (or cat, for that matter) were genengineered for "healthy longevity", I wouldn't *want* the pet to have a distinctive look. If it did, people would have an incentive to try to steal her, or him--especially if they were expensive.

As for "would there be a market" for such long-lived pets, I think the answer is "yes", at least if these pets were as human-friendly as the average pet. It's a wrench when a pet dies, and people try to avoid it if possible.

Eric and I have often wished to have a clone of Sugar, our cat, available to us after she dies. Having her naturally and healthily live, say, 10 or 15 years longer than a cat's natural span would be better, in a way, from our perspective.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

It's actually sort of been done, on a very limited scale. When designing the American Mastiff, the breeder had two basic criteria in which she departed from the English Mastiff: less drool and longer lives. (The English Mastiff, like most of the giant breeds, tends not to live past 7 or 8.) She got both by carefully selected crossbreeds to the Anatolian Shepherd, and her American Mastiffs have a healthy lifespan of 12-14 years, which is unheard-of for a breed that large.

Yes, I realize that's not the same as a breed which outlives normal life expectancies for dogs as a whole, rather than simply for its own breed, but it's a beginning. And the American Mastiff lovers will tell you it was very important in their choice of breed.

[clstal.livejournal.com]

I'm not familar with the Am Mastiffs...? I've seen french, bull, neopolitin, cane corso, and the white ones I'm spacing on, but American is a new one to me. Running off to work but I'll google for images later. Thanks!

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

Well maybe the big, short-lived dog lovers would press strongly for a little-dog long life span, so that would be what there was,at least at first?

I'm fifty, so I don't know that I'd want a little dog which could live 25+ years, but a big dog that lived 15 sounds good.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

longevity dogs

Ugh. (The expression, not the concept.) How about "long-lived dogs"? (With a long I, as in "life": it's from "long life" + "-ed", not "long" + "lived".) Or borrow a word from Tolkien, who wrote somewhere (in a letter, maybe?) that the Elves were not immortal but longeval (which would be pronounced with a soft G, approx. "LAWN-ju-v'l" or "LAWN-ji-v'l").

-- Dr. Whom

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Actually I think the best term (from a marketing perspective" would be "life dogs."

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

If you'd asked me this ten years ago, I'd have wanted one - even more, a "longevity cat." In my mid-forties, I recognize the possibility (though not yet, I hope, the probability) of a "longevity pet" outliving me, and I wouldn't want to do that, especially to a dog. Dogs become very dependent.