Basically, a dachshund in reverse: short back and long legs! Not at all what people would actually want in a coursing hound.
Of course, the vast majority of Afghan hounds in the West aren’t even thought of as coursing dogs.
They were objects of conspicuous consumption, and no one seriously considered breeding them for anything other than something to look at.
Which is why the dogs look so bizarre.
It’s not a cruel breeding practice like the ones used to create pugs and bulldogs, but it’s one that utterly distorts what this type of dog has been for thousands of years.
The dog fancy is really not concerned with the real world or “preservation.” It’s concerned with what wins dog shows.
This is why the whole concept is faulty in its premise.
Natural History 
Just love broad generalizations of the dog fancy that paint us all the same color…I have been showing dogs for a decade, yet I am very concerned with maintaining working ability. Perhaps you should look up the sheer number of dual champion afghans.
And, no, this isn’t even “my” breed. However, I do come from borzoi and I have put my hands on many, many afghans.
Jacking them off?
Does anyone hunt with an Afghan hound in the West? I’ve never known of anyone to breed them for that purpose, unless they were of Russian racing stock, which the Russians think is a different breed.
There some people who do OFC with Afghans (OFC is not hunting. Neither is lure coursing.) These dogs look nothing like the dog in the illustration, even under the coat. Some of the dogs competing in NOFCA trials are from racing lines, and these also looking nothing like the dog in the illustration.
I have never seen a picture of a native Tazi type that looks like the illustration. Too short loin, too long neck, and the artist didn’t seem to understand where the stifle (knee) joint goes. There is a reason that the racing Afghan population has a longer loin than much of the show population: they are bred for speed. Speed is associated with a longer, more flexible loin. There is also a reason that some Afghan people use the excuse that “Afghans are supposed to be slower than Salukis.” Their dogs are not bred for speed, but for a nice look at the trot.
Even my Afghans who are poor (IMO) runners do not look like that illustration.
Sighthounds that can’t catch a rabbit are like ice cream you can’t eat.
Words matter, if you just quit calling them a sighthound and call them “Pretty, Lean, Long Haired Dogs” then does it mater if they are built for running or trotting?
The problem is that were are told how the American variety of the breed has not been changed. So when we see the changes, we are shocked and we feel that we have been lied to and misled.
Honesty would be better. It is better to say, “We can’t preserve their running ability all that well by just showing them. We try, but to breed dogs for speed, it is best if you see them run”.
It has been awhile since I’ve seen Afghan Hounds, but don’t/didn’t they have lots more angulation in the rears legs? And wasn’t/isn’t one of their distinctive features a pelvis whose lower edge sloped more rearward? Wasn’t that why they were said to have very high tail carriage?
And I agree that the drawing looks short backed for most sighthounds, but I have NOT had my hands on them. I figure you judge a sighthound by if he runs well.
In theory, a sighthound COULD run well with a short back IF it wasn’t too short, and if he had flat croup and shoulder conformation to match.
But that is just In THEORY or Accoding To The People Who Write About Dog Conformation. I might have read too much dog show stuff to think correcty about it. Judging dogs shouldn’t be about theory, it should be about reality, about performance, about commen sense.
The Afghan Hound has NOT been ruined. Or at least not last time I looked. I guess somebody could shave the coat off of one next summer and take photos so we would all know what they loooked like in a short coat. But does it really mater?
When it comes to illustrating canine structure, a great many artists’ conceptions are not as accurate as they should be. And this is exacerbated by corresponding lack of knowledge on the part of the breed people in charge of producing these representations. I’ve seen drawings with incorrect number of ribs, misplaced vertebrae, and many other factual errors. In fact, I have a fat folder full of such examples. They range from amusing to appalling.
Maybe, if the club really wanted to see structure, they could open a class for shaved Afghan Hounds. Maybe one class where they have hair left longer on the ears and tail (for warmth) this could satisfy the practical people,
– and another class with longer hair the ears, tail, and lower legs – that way they could flash waves of hair around when they trotted around the ring, AND think of all the time which could be saved in grooming after the body, neck, and upper legs have been clippered!
And if show people couldn’t adapt to the change, you could tell them that the dogs were Giant Powder Powder Puff Chinese Crested in a show clip. (Just Joking)
Or, if the club was truely trying to keep sighthounds as sighthounds, they could judge sighthounds as they ran a lure course – not perfect but it would be an improvement.
I guess, when you learn to judge dogs well enough to know what your club is doing wrong (and they wont change) then you have matured enough to break away from Mommy Breed Club and Daddy Big Club, and breed on you own.
Most of the very best dog people I have talked to are ex-showers. They had the DOG LOVE to join, the INTELLIGENCE to understand the theories, the ABILITY to apply theory to live animals and judge gait, the PERCEPTION to see that the blueprints were faulty, he COURAGE to stand up and quit, the FORGIVENESS to return to watch shows even after they had quit and couldn’t get the people in charge to see reason, and the SOCIALNESS to talk to strangers like me sitting ringside. Either that or they just didn’t need the tax exemption anymore.
I don’t miss shows, (by the time I had room to breed dogs, show dog CULTure seemed silly, I watched not showed).
I miss sitting or standing ringside and talking to the exbreeders. The people with dogs entered were usually too busy, frazzled, and bogged down with dogs to relax, walk around watching the various rings, and chitchat with strangers.
You don’t even hear the word “ringside” much anymore. I guess the closest to it now would be “texting to other people who are also watching the same show”.
But the bigger problem isn’t what the judges are missing, or errors in the standards – it is the whole concept, the ideas which are the foundation of the show scene and the purebred show cult. It is time for a paradigm shift.
Even better would be one show class for the shaved dogs, and another class where the handler carries around an armload of hair.
Those are some pretty poor-quality drawings in that book – a dog that short in the back wouldn’t even look good trotting around a show ring.
All champions in heavily coated breeds should be required to compete in a shaved off class and win a certain number of firsts from that class to keep their championship.
I used to work with a couple of Afghan exhibitors and when one of their dogs occasionally got away they’d get phone calls a day or two later – from the next county…! Personally I can still outrun a shih tzu – just!
I used to work with two Afghan exhibitors way back. All I recall is there were two main strains from the country of origin, built respectively on cobby or racy lines; one variant was called something like ghazni? I also remember that when one of them got out my colleagues got a phone call two days later – from the next county.
The two original kennels of imports were Ghazni and the Bell Murrays (later Cove kennels.) Supposedly these represented two types, Ghazni the mountain type, Bell Murray the desert type. There was very vicious fighting about who had the ‘real’ Afghan hound and eventually Bell Murray turned his kennel over to his kennel maid, who named it Cove kennels.
All the type stuff is bullshit. Types were all over the place. The Bell Murray dogs came from what is now Pakistan, and there were both lanky dogs and more compact heavily coated dogs. The Ghaznis came from around Kabul and the same applies to them.
Even modern country of origin Afghans have type all over the place. And they certainly look very little like the modern show Afghan. The racing lines retain a more natural, functional type.
Preoccupation with coat, as required to go far showing Affies, can be pretty cruel, perhaps as cruel as brachy breeding. The Afghan breeder who lived next door to me in Australia used to spend hours grooming her 12, including hand-plucking the part that runs down the ridge of the spine. They wouldn’t dream of allowing their dogs to run in a natural setting for fear of picking up burrs. Sad, cause sight hounds are so beautiful when they run.
Jen, that reminds me of kids whose mother would tell them “No you can’t go outside and play with the other kids, you’ll get your clothes dirty”.
That use to be somewhat common, instead of buying their children cheap play clothes for after school, the parents would make their children wear fancy (dry clean only) outfits or dresses, then refuse to let their children do anything which would work up a sweat or get dirt on the clothing.
There was a Julie Andrews movie about a nanny, “The Sound of Music”, which showed this type of cruelity to children. The widowed father had a large family and all the children had to dress well all the time. So when the father ordered new drapes on the window, the nanny made play clothes out of them for the children. It also tried to teach that children need their parent’s love, that it wasn’t enough to just teach your children to respect you.
Julie Andrews was also in “Mary Poppins” which tried to teach that children need to play, and not always be practical, and to use their imagination (also the lesson from Peter Pan), and that children value a father who works 40 hours or less a week but who is home with them and who plays with them (Let’s Go Fly A Kite) more than a workaholic father who provides well but who they never see.
You might not believe that parents would need such simple lessons, but sometimes love and common sense get pushed aside in the pursuit of status or money. True for parents and kids, as well as dogs and their people too.
Maybe what dogs need is a Disney movie that shows people that dogs need to be part of a family or with their person, instead of living in a shipping crate.
And that the status of winning a dog show doesn’t mean anything to the dog, and that a dog would rather be groomed into a playcoat that he could play in, than to have his hair rolled up in waxpaper curlers 24/7 so the ends don’t fray and the coat grows longer,
and that dogs would happily never win a ribbon a their life if someone would just remove the Elizabethan Collar (the Cone of Shame) which the person they love makes them wear so that they don’t try to chew of all the nasty uncomfortable curlers which their hair is kept in.
Actually, Disney has always been pretty savvy about animals, what animals and kids like vs what people force dogs (and kids) to live like. In “Lady and the Tramp” the purebred has a safer life (or so it seems) but the homeless mutt, Tramp, enjoys life more. But Lady, the purebred spaniel wants to give and recieve love and to have friends more than she wants freedom and adventure (like any well bred tame pet dog should).
But you are correct, the restriction put on many long haired breeds are cruel. Especially in the case of the short legged dogs where people want their dog’s hair to drag on the ground during shows so they force the dog to live with its hair rolled up in curlers , and the dog muzzled, coned, or nagged and puninshed into not chewing the curlers.
When I see a dog with hair dragging the ground, I know that if the dog lived a normal life running in a yard and racing across th carpet, the ends of the hair would of been rubbed away.
Do you see beauty in a dog whose coat flows across the ground or do you see restriction to the point of dog abuse?
And just like with dolled up children, people blame the dog for being the “fancy pants” sort. Some people laugh at poodles and think Maltese Dogs with hair that drags the ground are funny “Poofy” dogs, bt it isn’t the dog’s fault.
And I have heard that some people encourage their show dogs to keep a full winter coat by locking them in a cold dark basement, turning on the lights for just long enough to feed, clean, and groom the dogs. (A dog’s brain knows that it is winter and time to grow more fur, but how many hour of light there is).
It is cruel how far some people will go to try to force those under their care to conform to sniffy stuck up standards of the style they have been told is best.
Perhaps “fancy” is an insult after all?
Correction of my above post: thats “…time to grow more fur, BY how many hours of light…”.
And to clarify: The nanny made play clothes from the OLD drapes that were going to be trashed, not new drapes. And the waxpaper curlers aren’t to curl the hair, but to preserve the hair, this is done to many dogs with long straight hair.
Jess “all the type stuff is bullshit”,
I agree. I believe most sighthounds come from one original line, and they should be shown and bred as varieties of one breed.
I also recognise that “cookie cutter” breeds are off the norm, it is something else that our shows do to a breed.
A proper breed should have several types. Some individual dogs in a breed should be taller and others shorter, some sprinters, other better at running distance. Some better at running in the rain, others better at running in full sunlight.
Otherwise a hunter would need a pack with one or two dogs of each breed -unless he always hunts in the same type of area and on the same game. But for people who don’t live where their dogs can run free, the dogs might hunt up in the mountains in the summer weekends, across flat dry lands in the winter, across farm stubble in the fall, and thru mud in the spring.
If the sighthounds were classed as all one breed but with different varieties then those who wanted to just breed whippets to only other whipppets could continue to do so, and those who wanted to cross their whippet with another sighthund could do so.
And the mixed variety could be shown as “American bred” – like how you could find one individual American who is part English, part Afghan, part French, part Italian, and yet 100% American.
And I’d do the same for the earth going terriers and Dachshunds too. Yep, somebody could have a purebred Jack Russell/Border terrier Dachshund/Fox terrier. And it could be a purebred American bred Earthdog.
I believe there should be/truely are only a few types of dogs and that most “breeds” are just variations on the same theme. Like there was lots of different types of Border Collies but people CHOSE which type would be the show type.
There are two major genetic lineages in sighthounds: the drop-eared sighthounds in the Middle East/Asia/North Africa and the rose-eared sighthounds in Europe/Russia. The rose-eared dogs are more closely related to the herding breeds. Not very much work involving large portions of the genome has been done in Sloughi and Azawakh. How they relate, specifically, to the Saluki/Tazi/Afghan complex is unknown.
Afghans/Tazis/Salukis are the same breed, genetically. Selection in the West has drastically changed the phenotype of the Afghan.
The reason I have hairy dogs (Shelties) is that I like dogs with hair. So, nooo, I am not going to shave my dogs (besides which when you shave a Sheltie, the coat texture takes forever to come back). In THEORY, conformation judges should be able to judge structure by the way the dog moves, and by putting hands on the dog to evaluate angulation (I know in practice things don’t work that way–see the ridiculous straight fronts on so many conformation Shelties).
It’s a moot point since I don’t show in Conformation anyway. But just saying.
However, is an Afghan supposed to have a level topline like that?
Afghan people like a level topline. It makes a nice rack to hang coat from. A running dog typically does NOT have a level topline like a table. There is usually a slope from the neck to the back, sometimes with a dip, where the trapezius is. A good loin should be flexible. It may not have an arch to it when the dog is standing naturally. How far the hips stick out is dependent on how hight the iliac crests are. Many Afghans are not bred to be running dogs FIRST. They are bred to be pretty at the trot and to look nice standing still.