Whether you agree with buying a purebred or not, nothing is ever going to change because there will always be people who want to purchase a certain breed. I get that, and hopefully the dog is purchased from a reputable breeder.

What I have issue with is that there are breeders looking to come up with new breeds. Do we really need another breed? Aren’t there enough to choose from?  What about all the purebreds that are now showing up in shelters, is the Huskinois going to eventually end up in the same place?

Here are the details from The Press Association.

Mr Debenham, who co-owns DK9 Security Services in Ipswich, Suffolk, with his father Anthony, said the puppy was born late on Sunday last week. “People have been trying to breed the two dogs for years but for some reason they would not breed and the pups died hours after they were born,” said Mr Debenham.

“We believe this is the only one in the world and we hope now we can create a bigger and better breed. We wanted to breed the two because the Belgian Malinois is a very fast and active dog and they can get to great speeds. They also have a high prey drive, but they do tend to over-heat and get tired very quickly.

Mr Debenham – who sells dogs all over the world to police forces, the military and to celebrities – said that colleagues from the US and Canada “could not believe it” when they heard about the birth and are coming to see the puppy in the next few weeks.

Mr. Debenham talks about the new breed being great security dogs, don’t we have enough dogs that already fit the bill?  Maybe it’s just me, but I simply don’t understand coming up with more breeds when there are already puppies being born simply to be killed.

Give me a bark, what do you think?

* Pic courtesy The Press Association

I’m not talking about the fun game on Dogster where you try and guess what breed a dog is by looking at a picture. Can you guess what breed of dog a person might own by looking at them?  According to one study the results show it’s possible.

A group of 70 people who do not own dogs were asked to match photos of 41 dog owners to three possible breeds – Labrador, poodle or Staffordshire bull terrier. They matched the owners to the dogs more than half the time. Yet given three choices, they should have been right only about a third of the time.

“This suggests that certain breeds of dogs are associated with particular kinds of people,” said study leader Lance Workman, a psychologist at Bath Spa University in the UK.

The analysis runs deep: Those who don’t own dogs used stereotypes to match the dogs to their owners, Workman figures. “These stereotypes persisted into judgments of the dog owners’ personalities: non dog owners considered the owners of each breed to share certain personality traits, such as level of conscientiousness and emotional stability.”

The real connection is only skin deep, however.

“But when we tested the dog owners’ personalities, we found no strong links between any particular personality trait and choice of dog breed, so any shared qualities are only skin deep,” Workman said.

The findings were presented at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Brighton. What do you think about the study?  Do you think some people look like their dogs? Give me a bark.

* In memory of Bo’s friend Bull Boy who left us too soon on March 28, 2009.

If you had fun trying to guess the breeds in our “Who’s Your Daddy? Win A DNA Kit” contest, you’re really going to enjoy Dogster’s new game. Plus, you can win free zealies!

The Dog Breed Photo Game shows a portion of three pictures, as shown to left,  and you need to guess their breeds.

Earn Zealies Prizes!

When you reach 1000 points and every 1000-point increment after that, we will reward you with 25 Zealies automatically!

How Scoring Works:

Your score reflects your all-time number of correct answers. A wrong guess does not affect your score, though we do keep track of how many total questions you have tried.

There are three levels: beginner, intermediate, and expert. All you need to do to get started is pick a level and start playing.  What are you waiting for?  Run on over and try to get your name on the leaderboard.

Good luck!