Better sense has directed the fanciers of some few breeds.
On the whole, the show Labrador is a good all-round dog,
and the intelligence of some of the Toy dogs, notably the " Peke," is astonishingly acute. The worst happens among dogs that are not very widely kept. Most of us perhaps in our experience of dogs have known nothing quite so painful as the physical ills, such as in-turned eyelids that befall the Dalmatian, solely as the result of excessive in-breeding in which nothing but form and colour is considered. It may be that " the Heinzes," the dogs of untraceably mixed ancestry, are the most intelligent, but I do not think so.
Probably, as in many other animals—fowls, for example---the
first cross between two pure-bred races is the best ; and this means that pureness of breed is wholly. desirable.
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