Kasper Hauser

You don't hear about people being outraged over dogs with kennel syndrome anymore.

Is it that people care less about it? Or that they haven't heard about it? Or that we now have it too?

I went looking for a link to post, explaining what kennel syndrome was.

But the post I found described a different condition, although they called it kennel syndrome.

What I am talking about is where the dog was left in a stark environment for so long that it's brain fails to develop. This is why breeders were urge to sell their puppies before they were 4 months old.

What was on the net were a couple of articles about imprinting. I guess I could have dug deeper, but I think it will be easier to just explain.

Strange, the other part of this, is not the same as I was taught either. Wikipedia's post on Kasper Hauser is nothing at all like I was taught about him.

Casper Hauser was a subject that teachers didn't just dutifully teach, it was a subject that they liked to talk about. My parent knew the tale, teachers frequently used it as an example for their point of view.

Like: Women should not be allowed to work, so their babies can get full attention, and not grow up like Casper Hauser.

This is because, back then it was common for working wives to just leave the baby alone in the house in a playpen, and have a neighbor come over every four hours to feed and change the baby. It was not unusual for babies to be left alone until school age. Some had no knowledge of the world - they were kept in a room with a locked door;

other children had the opposite - they wandered the streets with a pack of other children (like Our Gang?) until old enough for school.

Now that we have day care, where little kids can play with other little kids, it almost seems like isolation to NOT put a pre-schooler in day care once or twice a week so that he can explore relationships with other children.

Kasper Hauser, was also used as an example of why we should study hard. Someone would ask the teacher why we have to learn this junk we will never use, and we would get told that we didn't want to end up like Casper Hauser - our brains needed to learn something every day to develop normally.

Kasper Hauser was said to have been a 'lab rat' (an 'animal' use in an experiment).

In Europe, each area had it's own language, and dialects. Much of a student's time was spent learning other languages. (They didn't have Google Translate This Page or Babblefish, they didn't have electricity).

The holy grail of the time was to find a way for all of Europe to speak one language. The study of languages was very important then for political unity. Animals don't talk, so they couldn't be used in experiments on language. But birds have song, and so studies were done on bird song.

Some scientist found that the eggs of some song birds could be removed from a nest - and the male birds would still sing their species mating song at puberty.

It was hypothesized that people were meant to suddenly start speaking at puberty, but that we had outsmarted ourselves, and since we are all one species, we should speak the same language.

It was believed that children (clever little 'birdies' that they are), mimicked adult languages and thereby, ruined their ability to speak the natural human language at puberty, and that this corruption of natural language had been passed down through the generations.

So 2 scientists, paid a woman who couldn't speak (deaf-mute?) to raise a baby (Kasper Hauser) without him ever hearing speech. She and her husband (who did not speak to his deaf wife) lived in a rented cottage way off where Kasper would never hear people outside.

The woman kept him in one room, and raised him like one might a hog. She fed him, but ignored him. The husband attacked Kasper if he tried to leave the room.

After puberty, one of the scientist came to find what language Casper spoke. Casper didn't speak any language. The scientist tried teaching him language, but later took him to the city where the other scientist lived and dumped Casper Hauser there.

That's what I was taught.

There was a study on rats which proved the point, rats raised in isolation were retarded and their brains under developed. But even older rat's brains would develop if removed from the isolation and deprived environment and given an enriched environment - according to what I was taught in school.

Found this little book, that you can scroll through and read:
http://books.google.com/
enter: Casper Hauser an account of an individual kept in a dungeon.
It was written in 1833, and is a short read.

It is interesting that alligators raised in the dark, grow very very differently than those raised in the light - they are said to grow very quickly, and reach huge size in a few years.

This, of course, is cruel, like keeping long haired shows dogs in a cold dark basement in the belief that the darkness and cold will make them grow super long coats.

How accurate can are guesses about the intelligence of animals be, when they are raised in cages, or taken from their natural abode and tested in a strange environment?

Even those watched in the wilds, have such uneducated minds, that we don't really know what they could be if taught concepts in a manner they could understand.

What IQ would a man have, before he had a culture or any learning from previous generations?

Judging the inbreds.

If the standards can't easily be changed, can the judging be changed? Can there be a rule made like the rule that applies to all breeds: "All male dogs must have 2 testicles, fully descended in the scrotum"?

Can that universal rule be expanded upon to read things like the dog must be healthy, move well, not have saggy skin, -

- not have loose lower lips that cause the saliva to run out of the dogs mouth (yucky for the owners & dry mouth for the dog - AFAIK, only useful for Frankensteins that want to measure saliva production (Pavlov?), and I don't think scientist do that same experiment anymore.

etc.

How about the rule that the dog can't try to bite the judge? Can that be expanded upon to have where the dog must be friendly towards the judge?

Can it also say that all dogs must be friendly towards people at the show, and towards other dogs?

Is that too much to ask of show dogs?

It might be. That is probably one of the things novices first notice at a dog show. They know that their own dogs would be overjoyed to be at a dog show - in the belief that they could play with other dogs.

Pet owners can often picture what their dog would do at a show - jump up and down, wag his tail, grin, make eye contact at the other dogs. Whine at the in season females, or flirt with the boy dogs.

But I have noticed that at the dog shows, so many of the dogs move around like zombies - that is, the dogs don't try to play with each other.

They often act like they are the only dog there. Like the other dogs and other people are not there at all. Like a negative hallucination - like they are not seeing reality, as if they fail to smell that these are other dogs, and that there are other people there.

After a few dead end conversations, someone told me "They aren't trained to do that, they have kennel syndrome."

What? Harking to terriermans post "Do Kennels make dogs stupid?" It has a name "kennel syndrome".

http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/
Dec 3, 2009

Have you noticed how people have gotten that way? We have! People use to say "Good morning", "Good afternoon" or "Good evening" to everybody who walked by the on the sidewalk.

Crocodile Dundee (one of the movies in the series) had a scene where he first goes to New York City (having been raised way out in the boonies of Australia) and he greets each person that walks by him on the side walk with "Good Day!" and tips his hat at the ladies. Because that is what he was taught, and that is what everybody did in his little town - just like people use to do in America.

Now we walk by each other like one show dog does another.

Eeeeks, is this a sign that we have "House syndrome"? Did we fail to notice that we were causing dogs to suffer from this, and in divine retribution, now we suffer from it?

I have said for some time, that dogs so mean and un-sociable that they can't be kept in a pack should be neutered/ spayed. Now, I believe that even more.

If they are written only on paper?

If the standards can be legally be changed, then the answer is easy, re-write the standards.

What to change? Want my opinion?

Get the breeders themselves to reach that moment of realization where they understand that they have been breeding for harmful mutations.

Those breeders who can't understand will have to adjust to "We are all doing it this way now, breed accordingly."

What to change in the standards is very easy - maybe if you are too close to it, you can't see it, but just breed normal looking dogs.

Some basics:
1. Dogs have a tail. The tail expresses the dogs emotions.

2. The dog's tail should NOT curl over it's back. A curl in any part of the spine, could mean a deformity in other parts of the spine, which might not be obvious when the dog tries to stand normally.

In dog sign language, a tail temporally curled over the back is a sign for aggression or suspicious alertness - which is not generally the baseline temperament you want your dog to have.

A genetically curled tail, that usually stays in that position, communicates this mental state all the time - leaving owners and guests unaware of when the dog is hyped, because he always looks like that.

3. Dogs have two ears. Dogs with one ear, might have had a damaged ear, dogs with two cropped or chomped off ears should not be shown, because how would you know what type of ear he genetically has? And if you let people show cropped dogs - some people will crop their dogs ears.

Dogs ears come in various forms. Some dog's ears are like a wolf's ears - they usually stand up, but are mobile. Some dogs have ears that flop down. Some dogs have ears that part way stand up. These are all okay.

But some dogs are bred to have very long ears. This does NOT help them hear better, it's like having giant ear lobes (although it is actually the whole exterior part of the ear).

Very long ears are bad, especially if they are wrinkly. The dogs can get ear infections, and the tips of the ears can drag the ground when the dog puts his nose to the ground.

3. Dogs should not have very short legs. Dogs should not have very long backs.

4. All dogs should have teeth that meet well. The incisors should meet in a scissor position. Level or slightly undershot is a fault. Obviously undershot or overshot is a DQ.

5. Dogs like to see, they should be allowed to do so. All dogs whose hair covers their eyes, should be shown with their hair pulled away from their eyes, or with their bangs cut. (This one is easy to do, it is not a breeding change.)

6. Dog's hair has a natural growth direction. Dogs with cowlicks or ridges of hair that grow the wrong way, should not be shown.

7. Dogs have a snout, a muzzle. If a dog doesn't have a snout, he can't breathe right. Dogs without a snout (flat-faced dogs) should only be bred to dogs who do have a snout. Dogs without a normal snout should not be shown.

8. Dog's skin should be elastic, but not wrinkled or in folds.

9. Dogs should have eyes that are set like a wolf's eyes, or somewhat deeper or a little bit shallower set. Dogs should not be shown if they have pop eyes.

10. Dogs have four toes and one dew claw on each front leg. Each back leg should have 4 toes, with one dewclaw being optional.

There are probably lots of others, if I took the time to think on it, but you get the idea, of what I mean.

And what about all the health problems that can't be seen? Aren't they even worse?
Yes, they are. But we have to start somewhere, and this is something the breeders can see without testing. Judges can see it.

Changing the standards?

As some of you might have read, people sued when one breed club & the multi-breed kennel club which it belongs to, changed one breed standard.

Some dog people are really into the show scene and they don't like changes that put them at a disadvantage or push them out of the game.

As far as I know, neither of the clubs had to pay anything out in any settlement, but court battles still cost money.

Which brings us to the question of: Can breed clubs change their standards (without courtroom conflict), or are they like a steel hulled ship, strong but not very flexible?

The British are changing some of their standards a little bit.

IF, if, if, if American dog breed standards are not truly changeable, then what?

Could any of the multi-breed kennel clubs in America safely drop any breed because they no longer feel the standard describes a healthy dog?

If not, then, although the standards were not written on stone, they might as well have been, for they are no longer erasable, or editable. They have turned to stone (wasn't that a song?).

Even if they are dieing like dinosaurs, they would not be able to change?

If the court case was more of a test, and the standards are changeable, and the standards are re-writable then what?

The first question isn't "How should the standards be re-written?", but "How do the big kennels, and active breeders want the standards to be re-written" - that will tell you what to watch out for.

The people involved are very apt to want the standards to describe their own dogs, even if those dogs are having genetic problems.

If you followed the arguments against ear cropping, breeders whose dogs had ears that looked good uncropped were not so much against banning ear crops -

-but breeders whose dogs did not naturally have the desired type of ear, tended to be against banning ear crops, as then their dogs would lose in the ring, and be out of favor with the pet buying public.

It comes down to the question of just how changeable the standards are.

Could any multi-breed kennel club oust one of their breeds, without it being more effort and expense than what they could be asked to do?