this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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cute dogs, cats, and other animals
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What kind of dog is he? He's not Formosan, is he?
He's a rescue dog of unknown yet highly noble lineage. Seriously, I think he's a staffy x kelpie. Staffy for the colour and kelpie by body build.
Oh, could be. Here's a pic of a Formosan so you can see why I asked. That's a more typical coloring for them (or just dark/black). We have one that's tan and white. Don't see many of them.
You're right, that looks like him. Given that he came from an aboriginal family I'd still be on the side of 'street mix'.
Yeah, makes sense. It's always kind of funny to me that you can make a slurry of dog DNA from different breeds and come out with something that looks like a specific breed pure bred.
We had the opposite experience with ours. She was a rescue - born in Taiwan, mom was a feral dog who dug a den and had her litter, no clue who the dad was. A rescue organization took the puppies once they were weened and sent them to the US for adoption. We figured she's clearly a mutt, but we ended up doing the DNA testing to find out if she had any genetic medical issues and out of curiosity about what her mix is. It came back 100% Formosan. We just laughed.
I've read up on them and looked at some photos and he does suit the breed very well. The eyes are a bit different and I'm not sure what the "black coating" on the tongue is supposed to be. If I get financial enough to do a DNA test one day I might try it.
I'm not sure how consistent some of the behaviors they talk about are across the breed, but ours for sure has them. The one that really stands out to me is eye contact. With most dogs, eye contact is a dominance thing: if you stare into the eyes of your dog, it will look away because you're the alpha, but if you stare into the eyes and someone else's, they may well start barking, or even attack, because they think you're trying to be dominant and they aren't having it. If you stare into the eyes of our dog, she thinks it's the greatest thing to ever happen. Her tail wags and she wants to get closer to really look into your soul. She likes it more than being petted.
The other one is that they apparently evolved as scavengers (the aboriginal Taiwanese expected them to find their own food), and ours for sure scours the yard looking for food, and will eat fruit, leaves, and other stuff.