Posted on 11/30/2001 1:40:40 PM PST by blam
"The Dixie Dingo"
"The Native American Dog" "The American Dingo" " Southern Aboriginal Dog" "The Indian's Dog"
Still living Wild in the bottom land swamps and forests of the Southeastern United States.
Genetic (mitochondrial DNA) testing being performed at the University of South Carolina, College of Science and Mathematics, indicates that these dogs, related to the earliest domesticated dogs, are the remnant descendants of the feral pariah canids who came across the Bering land mass 8,000 to 11,000 years ago as hunting companions to the ancestors of the Native Americans.
However, their future in the wild looks bleak. Loss of habitat and competition from introduced species such as the coyote are driving these unique dogs to the brink of extinction.
The Carolina Dogs make gentle pets, winning show dogs, and good hunting/hiking companions - even when wild caught. They are willing, smart and never aggressive towards humans - alerting you to possible danger by standing at a distance and sounding a warning bark.
The same characteristics that have allowed them to survive for centuries in the wild are the same traits that make them perfect house pets: intelligent with a strong "pack" mentality that makes them biddable and submissive to their human "leader of the pack", healthy, clean (easily house broken with a desire to keep their denning area free of odor) with minimal scent (lack of smell ensured successful hunting and lack of discovery by larger predators).
Read on and see how you can participate in saving these unique dogs by becoming a member of the Carolina Dog Association, by contributing to the USC DNA research fund, or, if your circumstances permit, by owning a member of this great breed.
A really mouthy bunch of true believers posted separate threads claiming that the photo was hoaxed, based on the fairly tiny JPG that was on this now-archived (pay to view) page. Some of them even came back. The most recent thread said, "I can't believe this is still active!" Well, you're on the board, uh, Einstein??? ;')Wait! It's a ... : Unidentified creature stumps expertsRandolph County['s Bill] Kurdian... captured the animal on two frames of film on May 20, using a motion-sensing camera that his wife gave him for Christmas... In one frame, the animal was photographed from the front as it approached. The second frame caught a side view of the animal facing the camera. Kurdian called Guy Lichty, a curator of mammals at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. But Lichty couldn't help based on just the description. So, as soon as he got his film developed, he couldn't wait to show it to Lichty. But Lichty and other curators were still unable to conclusively identify the animal.
by Mark Brumley
6-3-04
For his pains, this poster was accused of too much masturbation. Yeah, I'm not makin' that up. I posted a reply to "anonymous", but that didn't lift the thread to the top. This is the photo that was posted in the article, at actual size.No mystery - its a 'Carolina Dog'The animal pictured is without doubt a 'Carolina Dog'. These dogs are the captive bred progeny of primitive long term feral/pariah phenotype dogs captured in the wild. They are wild or at least feral in the south east U.S. particulary the Carolinas. The general appearance and body-type of the southern pariahs are prototypic: a sharp pointed muzzle with erect pointed ears, giving a DISTINCTIVELY FOXLIKE appearance, a characteristically fish-hook-shaped tail usually showing a whitish or pale coloration on the underside, and a uniform reddish-yellow to ginger body color with a short, dense pelage. Minor variations occur. Please search the web for 'Carolina Dog' for similar photos.
Anonymous
06/09/2004
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I hope no one minds I bump this. About a month ago this white and yellow (ginger) colored dog with huge ears showed up at my house. Everyone here said it looked like a dingo and I thought so myself. I live in South East Ga with swamps all around me. Well the dog showed up and of course we feed it and it stays. Now I am wondering if this is one of the wild dogs I'm not all that far from the Savannah river nuclear plant area? It sure looks just like some of the pictures.
Hey Dixie Dingo Lovers!!! I just found this posting. I have a Carolina Dog (Dixie Dingo) -- I am hoping ya'll are still discussing this. I will gladly send a pic if someone can tell me how to attach the photo. They are unusual creatures. I grew up on a farm & we had many kinds of animals. Horses, cattle, pheasants & many kinds of dogs: Beagels (for rabbit hunting), Blue Heelers (for cattle hearding), german shepard (property protection), german short haired (bird dogs), and some kind of deer hunting dog. I have seen lots of kind of hunting... but truely NOTHING like what I have seen with Remi! In my experience Carolina Dogs take alot of hands-on training. They are great dogs... to help them behave, they need opportunities to be very eactive & not get bored. It takes a very responsible dog owner; however, if you have it in you - you are in for a treat. You will not find a more loyal dog anywhere.
Ditter,
I have recently discovered a lady named Michelle that Breeds BlackMouth Cur
June 28, 1997
Stalking the Ancient Dog
Man's best friend may go way back
By CHRISTINE MLOT
As ecologist at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., I. Lehr Brisbin Jr. keeps close tabs on the wildlife in the 300-square-mile spread surrounding the Department of Energy's nuclear facility. Beginning in the 1970s, in the course of routine monitoring of animals for radioactive contaminants, he occasionally came across wild dogs roaming the pine savannas or nosing around the dumpsters.
The dogs all seemed to be of a certain type: slightly shy with a medium build, foxlike face, large upright ears, and crook tail. With their tawny coats, the dogs could have stood in for Old Yeller, the quintessential canine of the rural South.
Brisbin, a zoologist at the University of Georgia and a long-time dog owner, gradually came to the conclusion that the wild dogs are physically and behaviorally distinct enough to constitute a uniform breed. The Carolina dog is now recognized by the United Kennel Club.
He also thinks there is something even more unusual about the dogs. They bear a strong resemblance to the dingo, the wild and ancient dog of Australian aborigines. Dingos and certain other Asian canines share with the Carolina dog the ginger-colored coat, which Brisbin says is a hallmark of a very ancient lineage. They also share an enthusiasm for scavenging.
The Carolina dogs, Brisbin suspects, may be North America's most primitive dog, representative of -- if not closely related to -- the domesticated canines that accompanied nomads across the Bering Strait into North America 8,000 years ago.
Brisbin, who writes about primitive dogs and the importance of understanding the dog's origins (see sidebar) in the April 15 Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, cautions that his interpretation is a hypothesis. The Carolina dogs could simply be a more recently isolated population of European descent or other canine stock. Genetic analyses are under way to help clarify how distinctive the animals are and how they fit into the worldwide story of people and dogs.
People have long wondered about the circumstances that led prehistoric dogs to come, sit, and permanently stay, thus creating the first human-animal bond. Researchers have generally based their interpretation of the origins of the domesticated dog on archaeological records. In the past decade, however, molecular biologists have started to study canine DNA to trace the complex ancestry of the more than 400 dog breeds and related canine species.
Dog genes are telling a radically different story from dog bones. An analysis in the June 13 Science concludes that dogs were domesticated much earlier than archaeologists maintain. Instead of a 10,000- to 20,000-year time frame, Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues now have evidence that dogs could have been domesticated 100,000 years ago -- if not earlier.
That conclusion has raised some hackles.
"I'm flabbergasted," says Brisbin.
"It's bound to be controversial because it's such an early date," says Marion Schwartz of Yale University. Schwartz's book, A History of Dogs in the Early Americas (Yale University Press), was released this month.
Other researchers find the result convincing, however surprising. The report "has really very compelling data," says Elaine Ostrander, a molecular biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who is collaborating on a study of the dog genome. "It's a fascinating and exciting story."
Even the fossil record has triggered clashes of opinion. Fossil bones of dogs have been found along with human remains in caves around the world. Arguments have been made that dogs first became domesticated in the Middle East, Europe, or various sites in Southeast Asia.
The time frame, however, has not been controversial. The fossils at the proposed sites all date from between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, times that slightly predate the origins of agriculture.
Many researchers supposed that these early dogs were descendants of tamed wolves, which interbred and evolved into a domesticated species. Other scientists suspected that jackals or coyotes contributed to the dog's ancestry.
The new genetic study was unable to resolve the question of the dog's geographic origin, says Carles Vilà of UCLA, but it did rule out as the dog's ancestor all canine species other than the wolf.
The researchers analyzed DNA from 162 wolves representing 27 populations in Europe, Asia, and North America. The results were compared with DNA from 140 dogs representing 67 breeds around the world -- from the African basenji to the Irish wolfhound.
The team collected either blood samples or hairs from all of the animals, then extracted DNA from those samples. DNA mutates over generations, and researchers use these changes to gauge the amount of time during which a lineage has evolved separately. The more similar two related sequences are, the less time the DNA molecules have had to mutate and the more recently the two species diverged.
Wayne and his colleagues looked at a segment of the cells' mitochondrial DNA, which is separate from the main, chromosomal DNA. Mitochondrial DNA mutates rapidly, making it useful for timing the evolutionary divergence of closely related species like dogs and wolves.
Based on the DNA sequences, most of the dogs could be assigned to one of four groups. The largest and most diverse group contains sequences found in the ancient dog breeds, including the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog, along with many modern breeds, such as the collie and retriever.
Other groups contained sequences -- taken from the elkhound and German shepherd, for example -- that were more closely related to certain wolf sequences than to those of the main dog group, bolstering the notion that dogs may have been domesticated from wolves several times. It's also possible, says Vilà, that domestication happened once, after which domesticated dogs bred with wolves from time to time.
What seems impossible, says Vilà, is that all the DNA variability evolved in the time frame usually assigned to domestication. "We have found so many differences in the DNA that the [dog's] origin cannot be 14,000 years ago," one of the commonly assigned dates for domestication.
That assumes, however, that the evolution of the small segment of DNA gauges accurately what was happening to the species overall. Such molecular clocks have been controversial, says Vilà.
The researchers do have an explanation for the older time frame that makes good sense, Ostrander says. Although the fossil record for dogs becomes obscure beyond about 14,000 years ago, there are fossils of wolf bones in association with early humans from well beyond 100,000 years ago.
Tamed wolves might have taken up with hunter-gatherers without changing in ways that the fossil record would capture. The dogs-in-process probably would have dallied with wolves as packs of humans and canines traveled the world.
The influx of new genes from those crossings could very well explain the extraordinarily high number of dog breeds that exists today, the researchers suggest. Dogs have much greater genetic variability than other domesticated animals, such as cats, says Vilà.
Once people settled and started to farm, they might have begun selectively breeding their wolf-dogs into herders, guards, and different kinds of hunters.
"When we became an agricultural society, what we needed dogs for changed enormously, and a further and irrevocable division occurred at that point," says Ostrander. That may be the point -- at which dogs and wolves were noticeably different physically -- that stands out in the fossil record.
The little-known Carolina dog was not included in the large analysis by Wayne's group. The genetic analysis that's been done on the breed so far hasn't clarified its pedigree. William F. Gergits of Therion Corp. in Troy, N.Y., has found that at least one genetic marker present in dingos and other primitive dogs is missing in the Carolina dog.
Schwartz says that the dogs probably aren't direct descendants but are "very similar to types of dogs Native Americans would have had in that part of the country." She adds, "they do seem to be more primitive -- what I think of as a basic dog."
The primitive dog that hung around Native Americans all but disappeared through interbreeding with European arrivals, says Schwartz, and probably with wolves and coyotes. Still, the basic dog lurks in the gene pool of today's highly bred pet, as compelling to people in postmodern times as it was in the Pleistocene.
Dog bites: One legacy of the dog's ancestry
It's been tens of thousands of years since canines went from predator to pet. Even though a dog's life now depends on its being adoring rather than marauding, the genetic links to its predatory forebears remain intact, in the tiniest toy poodle and the mightiest mastiff.
The close-knit pedigree of the dog (Canis familiaris) and the wolf (C. lupus) explains a serious and chronic problem. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people in the United States are bitten and seriously injured by dogs (SN: 6/18/94, p. 399). About a dozen people -- mostly children -- die of those injuries.
The exact number of dog bites is hard to pin down, since bites are usually just reported locally -- and only if it's someone else's dog, says Jeffrey Sacks, a medical epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. The available data, from two household surveys cited in the May 30 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, suggest that injuries from dog bites have gone up by about 37 percent in less than a decade.
Researchers estimate that 4.7 million people in the United States were bitten by dogs in 1994, resulting in 800,000 injuries requiring medical care. Those medical bills amount to an estimated $1 billion in insurance claims. An earlier report estimated that there were 585,000 serious dog bite injuries in 1986.
Much of the apparent increase may stem from a simple rise in the number of people and the number of dogs. "That's a big piece of the action," says Sacks.
Sacks and others point to irresponsible dog owners as the primary problem. "Any ill-bred, mishandled dog can be a biter," says Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C., who contributed to the CDC report.
As a graduate student in animal behavior, Lockwood studied wolves in Alaska. It was good training for his next study: dogs biting mail carriers in St. Louis.
Biting, says Lockwood, "is definitely a wolf behavior," but one that involves a specific set of cues. As predators, wolves chase and chomp down on small fleeing prey, which is why reports of dog bites often involve a running child. The best instruction for a child approached by a strange dog is to hold still.
"Part of the process of domestication has [entailed] turning the wolf into our teeth, our weapon. What we've done is taken away the wolf's natural control over biting and left it to the owner," says Lockwood. "That's where the problem comes from."
At the same time, the vast majority of the nearly 60 million dogs in U.S. households don't maim or kill people, adds Lockwood, but live in peaceable domesticity.
References:
Brisbin Jr., I.L., and T.S. Risch. 1997. Primitive dogs, their ecology and behavior: Unique opportunities to study the early development of the human-canine bond. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 210(April 15):1122.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1997. Dog-Bite–Related Fatalities—United States, 1995-1996. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 46(May 30):463.
Vila, C., et al. 1997. Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog. Science 276(June 13):1687.
Further Readings:
1994. Some dogs are not a child's best friend. Science News 145(June 18):399.
Schwartz, M. 1997. A History of Dog's in the Early Americas. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Sources:
I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr.
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
University of Georgia
P.O. Drawer E
Aiken, SC 29802
Carles Vila Department of Biology University of California Los Angeles, CA 90095
Your link didn't work for me but this one did.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97822&page=1
Welcome to FR! You'll find lot's of dog loving conservatives here.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f222/angelforlife/Picture48.jpg
that is a link to a photo of my dog...do you think she is a dingo?
Suspiciously similar, huh?
I wouldn't rule it out. Pretty dog.
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Folks, I have stumbled onto this board by searching "Carolina dogs" using Google. I didn't know any other way to speak up but to click "reply" on the last message on the page. If you can tell me how to learn to use this board, it'd be much appreciated. Is there this one long thread, or am I missing a much larger area on Carolina dogs?
Anyway, I am excited to see that Carolina dogs are being discussed somewhere! My wife and I just took a wild Carolina dog, Lita, from I. Lehr Brisbin, and have had her about five weeks now. To bring her home, we had to use a snare pole to catch her from Dr. Brisbin's kennel in Aiken, SC and put her in a crate for the drive home to Atlanta.
From an extremely frightened and cautious little girl, she's made big gains, but still has a long way to go. I would very much enjoy being able to discuss Carolina dogs with you folks, and would especially enjoy hearing from someone who has taken a wild dog home to tame.
My wife and I are about to begin construction on a pet boarding kennel here in the Atlanta metro area, and we're looking forward to breeding Lita with, as Dr. Brisbin put it, "the perfect male", once he has been found.
Also, how do you get to the Free Republic home page to this forum? Since I came straight here from Google, if I lose the link I have saved, I might have a tough time finding it again.
To see photos of Lita, go to this address: http://www.beechwoodtrails.com/Lita.html
Thanks, y'all
Gary
This is one thread of thousands we talk about daily, mostly conservative politics. When you get to the front page of Free Republic, click on 'latest posts' and you'll see all the online subjects we're presently discussing.
We have various individuals who are interested in different subjects, my area of interest is anthropology/archaeology, One of us FReepers (that's what we call ourselves) manages a 'doggie ' ping list and alerts all who are interested to all dog related threads, that person is FReeper, 'hairofthedog'. I will ping her here so that she can respond.
Welcome aboard and good luck with your 'Dixie Dingo.'
Dixie Dingo
Click on my screen name, 'blam' and you can see me and my doggies too.
FReeper! I have heard Neal Boortz speak of Free Republic and Freepers! Wow, small world, huh?
Yup. I heard about FR from Rush Limbaugh back in 1999, I've been here (hours every day, lol) since. Careful, it's addictive! (I'm a retired chip-maker so I have lots of time)
Looks like a Carolina Dog to me. Good luck with the puppies. I have my hands full here right now with abandoned dogs from hurricane Katrina, they're everyehere.
I hope you can find homes for them... I just wanted to post this to get the attention of some freepers. I know alot of us are interested in breeds like this. I am an Archaeologist and couldn't believe that this type of dog might show up on my door step. This summer I dug up hundreds of canine skeletal remains at a native american site in North Georgia and to think that this dog is probably related to those amazes me. :)
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