I’ve just realised my dog has ancestors!

[SirChenjins]

I mean, I know he’s got ancestors, but the thought that he had a great x whatever grandparents roaming the land in Georgian times or medieval times blows my mind. He’s descended from dogs who lived through major events in history and when I was born in the 60s his great x whatever grandparents were living too.

Does anyone else think it’s amazing that dogs have great etc grandparents? DH doesn’t share my awe sadly - I think he thinks I’m a bit mad (in a nice way).

Yea it’s a funny thought. My mum has a few dogs at any one time, and they go back generations within our family. Like her youngest at the moment is the great grandpup of the dog I got when I was 10, and he was the great, great, great, (maybe another great or two, I’m getting confused now 🤔) grandpup of a dog my GM brought with her when she moved across the country as a young woman etc. ANYWAY I find it so interesting and I love picking up similarities to relations etc. it’s cute.

Maybe Dick Whittington’s cat?

I love stuff like this. I often think who was my FIRST ancestor. Not like 1500 person but who was number 1. Mind blowing

I could trace my bearded collie I had in the early 1980s back to the first registered beardie and the first ones to be bred by a KC kennel to show rather than scruffy Scottish cow herding dogs

That would make for a hell of a family reunion : )

A work colleague shared a picture of her cat on Facebook and I commented how much he looked like my cat. We got their pedigree certificates out and discovered they shared a great grandad ‘Ozberry’. It was very cute to discover they were second cousins.

I love that!

We have whippets so can look right back at all the ancestry as there's a whippet archive. It's fascinating and you can see how a lot of the families have interbred. It's 7 generations.

My cat likes to remind me that her ancestors were considered gods.

Im just catching up with all these posts as we’ve been out all morning - they’re all fascinating! I never thought about trees and plants having ancestors, but of course they do - and I loved the post about the matriarch trees. Picture of my boy - we’ve been on a long walk up in the hills and now he’s had a bath after rolling in something disgusting and is sleeping it off.

So do mine and I point out to them we only domesticated them so they could deal with the vermin.

I've just been on greyhound data and found that one of the littermates of my dog was the epically named My Lovely Horse! We do know where one of her sisters went because they were both rehomed by a trainer when retired at the same time.

We can get back 35 generations down the male line to the 1820s and 43 generations down the female line to the late 1700s!

Oh my goodness @DoNotScrapeMyDataBishes! Were they all racing greyhounds?

Oh....

So that slug i trod on barefoot earlier? He was family?

I suppose so. You have common ancestors.

I was going to say similar. My old, now deceased, grey, had a very famous and prolific sire called Adios Alonso. He sired well over a thousand puppies! It's lovely being able to track their ancestry back so far as well.

What drives me nuts is to think that my dog's ancestors were hunting and killing rats in slums in Manchester, and now my dog demands to sleep under the duvet and looks at me with sad eyes like those of a Victorian orphan if I only suggest to go out when it's raining a bit.

We all have relations we don’t really get on with.

Maybe his ancestors were like ‘nope. I only kill rats in the dry. If it goes outside I’m not following.’

Yes. It's amazing to think that a chihuahua or a labradoodle or a cocker spaniel all came from the European Grey Wolf.

You have just blown my mind. I can't stop thinking about this now!!

Poor things ! 😂

Every single living thing on this planet is the result of thousands of generations of predecessors.

But it does blow your mind when you think about it.

I'm in a WhatsApp group with all my dog's 8 sibling owners, including her breeder, as she kept a pup. We are hoping to meet at some point, we're all dotted around the country.

It's so nice to watch them all growing and great to share info/worries ❤

Interesting thread and gas made me curious about Riverpup’s offspring. I know some siblings have become assistance dogs, and have followed their progress. Not sure about previous generations.