Other than a singular patch just inside her right ear and some hair on her paws and privates, Muppet has remained dressed for life in a nudist colony. Muppet is astound- ingly hairless. Now, according to accepted genetic
science, there are only five breeds of hair- less dogs. One is the product of a recessive gene, the American Hairless Rat Terrier, so Muppet would have to be a purebred one of those (not likely to be dumped in the forest). Two breeds are rare to the U.S.
(ditto, not likely to be dumped), the Peruvian Hairless and the Argentine Pila Dog. Then there is the Mexican Hairless Dog — with a name starting with X and too long to pronounce — and the Chinese Crested Dog. Muppet is not a good replica of
either of these breeds by body type, but because they have a dominant hairless gene, it is possible to cross-breed them and sporadically pass on the hairless trait to the resulting puppies. Now, we only intended to foster Muppet. And while we were fostering her, we, too, engaged in our own breed research and speculation, changing our opinion as her body weight and skin coloring returned to normal — well, what was normal for her. Then, we decided it was entirely ridiculous to think that Muppet would ever leave us and we adopted her as our very own. Now, we were willing to pay out the big bucks to conclusively and scientifically find out what Muppet was. We decided on Wisdom Panel and
$85, a few swabs of Muppet spit, and two weeks later we had our results. My hands trembled as I clicked the log-in button to learn Muppet’s pedigree. Which special hairless breed would she be? Who would win the bet? No one, because none of us guessed that Muppet is a Beagle. What? Muppet is 50% Beagle, 12.5%
“There have been long stretches of life where my self worth was determined through the lens provided by external roles. I have no such external roles, not anymore. I just have this place and these animals and the deep love of a very good man binding us all together. So, that is what I write about; a world that may seem too small and pedantic for most, yet makes my heart sing. I hope there is a part of you that can hear that song.” –Lisa Jetland Alexander,
FindingJubileeBlog.com
24 THE NEW BARKER
Brittany Spaniel, 12.5% Wirehaired Vizsla and 25% a mash-up of three broad breed groups. Not only did we not see that coming, we expressed great disappoint- ment in the product. It must be flawed, we thought. I wrote a follow-up email to the company, including pictures of Muppet and politely (well, as politely as I could) asked about the reliability of the
results in explaining our dog’s primary feature; her hairlessness. I expected to be blown off with standard mumbo jumbo. However, their follow-up email said they were exceedingly interested in pursuing this with me. They asked for more pictures and any other information we could provide. A week or so later, I received a call from Dr. Cindy Elston, who spent a thoroughly engaging half hour with me doing a deep dive into Muppet’s genetics. Let’s just say I learned a lot. Muppet
has a high level of homozygosity which is a nice way of saying she is a product of a fair bit of in-breeding. She has Beagle on both her maternal and paternal sides and those Beagles “knew” each other pretty well. Her hairlessness may be the result of that inbreeding and the malnutrition she was obviously subjected to, or that her mother was subjected to. It is also theo- retically possible that a spontaneous mutation occurred to create Muppet’s hairlessness. More likely, the hairlessness was specifically introduced and then “scrubbed clean” of the genetic pool. You can force breed through four and five generations of dogs in a relatively few years. Introducing a Chinese Crested (thus introducing the dominant hairless gene) at Muppet’s great or great-great- grandparent level would no longer show up as a gene imprint, yet the possibility of passing on the hairless gene would remain. That’s the story that makes the most
sense to me. I think someone, somewhere is doing some backwoods “designer dog” breeding with hairlessness as a goal. Muppet was valuable to them because of her hairlessness so they bred her exten- sively, taking minimal care of her, then dumping her when she was no longer useful. A horrible thought. But, Muppet is not horrible. Muppet
is unique and amazing and often times reminds me of fantasy animals, like uni- corns and dragons. Muppet is magical because she is Muppet and there is only one Muppet in the whole wide world. I am glad to have engaged in the process of finding out about her roots, I can’t say enough good things about Wisdom Panel, but in the end, I don’t care what Muppet is, just that Muppet is ours.
U
www.TheNewBarker.com
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