Statistics Vs Circumstance: Why Mutts Tend To Be Healthier

The choice between purebred dogs and mutts is a difficult one for a lot of owners to make. Good and bad experiences with individual dogs tend to give owners strong preferences. Not all aspects of this debate are subjective, though. When it comes to health and longevity, mutts have some undeniable advantages over their purebred compatriots.

The Stakes And The Biases

When it comes to dog health, people who prefer purebreds to mutts have definite opinions. So do dog owners with the opposite preference, though. Veterinarians are often called on to be the tiebreakers in this debate, and they come down over and over on the side of the mutts. This is nothing that purebred fanciers like to hear, but it appears to be the truth: Since their genetic backgrounds are much more varied, mutts tend to suffer fewer severe health effects over the full course of their lives. Some important caveats have to be made in order to justify this point of view, though.

The Facts About Adoption

Dog owners who are down on mutts have no difficulty in summoning up anecdotal stories about those shelter adoptions that saddle new owners with thousands of dollars in veterinary costs. It's true, many rescued dogs have health problems ranging from the incidental to the severe. The thing that's often glossed over by the pro-purebred side of the

debate, though, is that dogs coming out of breeders' puppy mills often have significant health problems of their own. There is one significant truth here: mutts adopted from shelters do have a high rate of infection with communicable diseases. Bear in mind, this is really all about the shelters, though, not the mutts themselves!

The Drawbacks Of Genetics

Where mutts have the true advantage over purebred dogs is in their much more varied, robust genetic background. Keeping a particular breed pure inevitably involves a lot of inbreeding and a lot of other measures that reduce genetic diversity. This doesn't just mean that certain breeds are predisposed to certain problems, (although that's certainly the case - hip dysplasia, for example, is chronic in purebred Bulldogs) it means that purebreds are, across the board, statistically more likely to suffer from hereditary health problems.

While mutts do have the odds stacked in their favor when it comes to hereditary issues, it's important for owners to remember that this is all about statistics across very large populations. Although fewer mutts have these problems, that's a long way from saying that mutts are immune to them. As always, responsible owners need to focus on the particular needs of their own pets and make sure their health is safeguarded as much as possible.

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