I was watching Life After People, and they said that if there were no people, dogs would interbreed until they were a sort of middle-of-the-road canine, not too extreme either way.

And that got me to thinking. One of the things that greyhound owners are warned about is that if a bunch of greyhounds get together, they will pack up, and can start attacking non-greyhounds. And I've read of this happening with other breeds, especially if the dogs are raised together. It becomes an "us against them" thing.

So... assuming that you have 10 dogs each of 3 different breeds, and there was no human intervention, would the dogs form into packs that were largely the same breed, or would they just randomly mix depending on the dogs' personalities? I'm just wondering how true that proposed "middle of the road" result is, or whether the dogs would exercise some self-selection that would preserve breed traits.

I don't recall much on this from my reading and training. That only leaves my experience and nobody in a lifetime can have that much experience and far too many people draw false conclusions based on too little data and tend to remember that which confirms what they already believe. This commonly shows with people expecting all of a breed to be like the few they know.

Back when my 14 year old Aster was a puppy, the monthly training meetings I was attending were dominated by her and the other Labs in her litter, and a litter of Goldens. The Labs would start rough play any time we gave them a chance. The Goldens would kind of stay off to the side. You could draw some conclusions from that, but they could be distorted by some factors of how much the litter mates were seeing each other and the individual personalities of the litters. Different litters of Labs and Goldens might have behaved differently. There was another Lab or 2 that joined in the mêlée. But then Isaac, a 6 month older Golden that lived with the one litter mate and litters mother, often joined in too. She was still young enough to join in too.

So when you turn a bunch of different breeds of dogs loose, their behavior is distorted by how much they see of each other, how their handlers are reacting, and who knows what else. Even as much as I see of litter mates together, I still don't think I have enough objective data to say if they really recognize each other. They always enjoy playing together, but may be reading subtle clues from their raisers. My daughter' Lab Luther and my friends Lab Sadie both were frequent visitors with our Lab Pepper. What I really remember was the difficulty of keeping them on task at meetings where they weren't turned loose. If they ganged up on the other dogs when they were, I don't remember it.

Froggy, thanks for starting an interesting topic.

I have been in countries where stray dogs are rampant and it is a major problem. In those situations, there didn't appear to be any selective preservation of their breed. I saw packs of dogs of all sizes and mixture of breeds. For those dogs that live outside all year long, I would imagine there would be a survival of the fittest that occurs, so the breeds that don't do well outside all year long, such as a chihuahua or maltese, might have a limited chance to interbreed, but the purity of that breed would die out quickly because they just aren't hardy enough breeds. Where I live we have coydogs. They are a combination of coyote and stray dogs, and they are feral. That breed occurred due to people dumping their dogs in isolated areas. Some of hardier breeds managed to find acceptance when they found a coyote pack and became part of that pack structure. They interbred with those coyotes and became a new breed. So, with those thoughts in mind, I think the conclusion that we would have a "middle of the road" breed after enough generations, is a logical one.

I have been thinking some more about this. That the dog guide program is about 80% Labs does reduce my chances to observe different breeds. Still there are times we have several of another breed at a meeting. I never really remember seeing the Goldens or Shepherds collecting into a group. Last Sunday at the mall, we had 6 Labs and 2 Shepherds. Of course, we never turn them loose there. If we had, I doubt the Shepherds would have followed the larger Labs into the fountain. But one can never tell. Some of my Labs haven't liked the water.

In Merle's Door, Ted Kerasote makes some comments on selective breeding of dogs and the changes after being domesticated. I have to disagree with many of his conclusions in the book. He really strikes me as one more dog owner fooled into thinking he is an expert by one easy dog. While he digs up sources that support him, they aren't the same sources more experienced people quote.

I've been mulling this over. With all the extremes we have bred into dogs, how easy is it for one breed to recognize another as a fellow canine? Greyhounds are perfect examples--many of them have probably never seen another breed of dog. Once they are out of the track environment, I wonder if they would make the connection with a Saluki or a Borzoi due to similar body conformation, gait, etc, but view a Chihuahua as being something closer to a prey animal?
What happens when we remove important communication devices by cropping ears and docking tails?
My guess is that the average well-socialized dog is able to generalize, but maybe with some misunderstandings. Is a Doberman spending time with a Border Collie something like me (with my thick Appalachian accent--the kind Jeff Foxworthy says makes people automatically deduct 100 points from your IQ) having a conversation with my British friend? In general we understand each other just fine, but sometimes we have to make the other go back and clarify something.
Without people in the picture meddling with genetic traits, my guess is that dogs would eventually revert back to something very similar to their wolf ancestors. Animals complete with erect ears, full tails, eye markings and everything else that makes for good intraspecies communication.
If some genetic oddity crops up in an animal, we select for it and call it a breed; if the same thing happens in people, we form a foundation and try to find a cure for it!

I'm thinking it would be pretty much middle of the road, too, but also wonder if local conditions might alter that. Dogs up in Alaska would probably be wolf/shepherd/husky like, because those breeds are well adapted to the conditions. But what about dogs in desert areas? After all, one reason that there are salukis and greyhounds is that they are fast enough that they can run down their prey, who can see them coming for miles. A GSD isn't going to be able to do that so well. On the other hand, I don't know which phenotype is more dominant... the sighthound or the GSD. So, in a desert environment, the sighthounds would have an edge in survival traits, but I don't know if their pups would survive if they were cross-bred with GSDs. On the other hand, survival of the fittest might result in the crosses not surviving, so the only dogs surviving to adulthood (and thus breeding) could be the sighthound types.

Which could result in a couple different dog phenotypes, depending on the local climate, terrain, and prey species.

That's a good point. Generally animals not subjected to selection pressures by humans will evolve into whatever phenotype best assures their survival. When you think about it, the ancient Egyptian dogs, even the dog-god Anubis, resembled sighthounds.

You both have brought up good points. If you think about all the different wild dog species there are today: the Australian Dingo, the New Guinea Singing Dog, the African Painted Wolf, the Asian Dhole, the Arctic (White) Wolf, the North American (Gray) Wolf, The South American Bush Dog and Maned Wolf, the Coyote (found throughout the American continents), and a handful of others, they all differ in apearance. Can we assume that is solely due to climate and non-interference of humans? If so, then with that in mind, do you think that today's breeds would interbreed after humans are gone, to eventually become some middle of the road breed which has adapted to it's environment as these other wild dogs have? I think environment plays a huge role in the conclusions that can be drawn. If we take Froggy's original question - 10 dogs of 3 different breeds and placed these 30 dogs in groups on each continent, would they all look the same or vastly different? How many generations would it take to create a new breed? Or, do you think they would exist for a certain amount of time only to be completely bred out of existence? I wonder what we would see in a 1,000 years after humans have died out, and then what would we see 100,000 years afterwards. If you believe in the theory of evolution (don't laugh -- check out the religion boards here), today's wild dogs don't look like the wild dogs of 1 million years ago. The dire wolf existed on the North American continent and became extinct about 7 million years ago. So, I guess another conclusion would be that they would constantly be evolving as long as life exists on this planet, and I think they would evolve in different ways depending on their environment.