Dog breeds like French bulldogs, pugs, and dachshunds may be suffering from an overdose in cuteness. Essentially, selective breeding for the traits that makes them popular is making it harder for some of them to live normal lives.
“It’s truly incredible what people have done with really what is supposed to be our companion,” says Enid Stiles, a veterinarian in Montreal who has been practicing for more than two decades. “Unfortunately, we have managed to totally mess them up.”
All dogs originally descend from wild wolves, which were domesticated over a long period between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. The transition from competitors to pets wasn’t always a smooth one, though, as humans often ate these pets in the early days of domestication.
Once dogs started becoming more of a fixed element in human societies, people began changing their shape through selective breeding. In this early period, these changes were ...
