Can confirm, everyone knew someone with a Chow in the 80s, we all knew fun facts like their purple tongues too.
1 Like
I guess I lived a sheltered life! But I would think that 30-40 years later that blood should be pretty dang diluted. Unless there’s some hotbed of Chows somewhere still letting them wantonly breed.
I knew one as a kid, and groomed two during my year stint as a dog bather. One of which I couldn’t even complete because once we were done with the bath, he was done with me. 
1 Like
I don’t think there’s a hotbed of chows somewhere.
I think they had their surge in popularity because they are big and fluffy… but they tend to be difficult dogs. So like GSDs and pits, a lot of them probably got abandoned.
I mean, pits have never been a top 10 breed AFAIK. But drive around low income areas or go to a shelter and you’ll find that hard to believe, because you’ll see nothing but endless pits and pit crosses.
4 Likes
It is, though.
4.6% chow is a single chow ancestor between 4 and 5 generations back.
Easy to see how a scattering of them even further back in the pedigree gives this sort of result. 3 x 6 generations back = 4.68%.
2 Likes
Back when mall pet stores with puppies were a thing (thankfully not so much anymore) chow puppies were incredibly popular.
3 Likes
My own dog has 25% chow according to the testing. That seems high to me, and it shows up on a lot of tests in general. There are far more common breeds I would expect to see that you don’t often, hence the question.
1 Like
I had forgotten about that but you are completely right. I remember playing with them at the mall pet stores when I was a kid.
1 Like
Here are some breeds near to chows in current popularity:
Chows are 88 on the AKC breed list ranking
79: Alaskan Malamute
81: Rat Terrier
85: Irish Setter
87: Pekingese
89: Old English Sheepdog
94: Lhasa Apso
Further down,
118: Greyhound
121: Pointer
Chows aren’t as common as they were but they’re not like Azawakh rare. They’re an ancient breed that’s had a “closed stud book” (so to speak) for such a long time, so it’s probably easy to differentiate that DNA in a mix.
Maybe they’re also being more used in cross bred breeding because they look like teddy bears, especially as puppies, which wouldn’t really be captured in the AKC rankings. Teddy bear puppies certainly sell, although it could make sense to market them minimizing the chow, since so many people have known snappy ones! 
Eta: wow, the ckc has a few dozen different chow cross options on their breeder finder tool. None with puppies available right now then I could find, but they’re being produced to have it as an option. You can poke around around and see what all is here:
Annnnnnd of course there are chow doodles. 
1 Like
I think they’re still popular enough with folks, and things like Tibetan Mastiffs are having some popularity too so it wouldn’t surprise me if someone chose a Chow because it was more available. As with many these days, the fact that they can be difficult and aggressive is actually what some people want…
Of course I had to click the link, knowing it would get my blood pressure up. For extra credit, the quote on their homepage “We don’t just sell puppies, we sell joy and happiness”
3 Likes
Oh boy… Sigh.
I think there are doodle just-about-everything.
OMG I know.
I felt kinda dirty after looking at their breeding stock 
https://www.mydreamdoodlepuppy.com/our-males
What poor examples of … everything.
3 Likes
“We are the first and the only ones in USA that raised mini and medium or standard Chowdoodle for over 9 years now, this mix makes excellent family dog with a fabulous temperament.”
I want whatever they’re drinking.
The only thing worse than a Chow is a potentially more athletic and smarter Chow.
16 Likes
Well, they are all “health tested and clear”. For what? Who knows. But they said it so it must be true.
My SO recently got a Cock a Poo from a breeder that actually does health testing, which was surprising. He ended up with an older male that they had acquired for breeding (not their own breeding) but he failed his hip OFA (mild dysplasia) so they neutered him. He’s a sweet dog. I don’t love the designer breed concept, but at least do the health testing.
In the process of looking at breeder websites, though, we found some really horrible ones. The best, though, was the one that said you couldn’t see the parents or the kennel, because they were protecting the dogs from your germs and said that they knew of a kennel that had to be closed due to brucellosis infection.
Don’t want to know what was going on in their kennel between the visitors and dogs. Yikes.
6 Likes
Cattle dog doodles are the worst I’ve seen yet. The poodle part doesn’t calm them down at all.
There seem to be many breeding shitzu-whatever, some with cocker and epilepsy kills some young.
Breeders have worked forever to establish pure breeds and now “consumers” want some fancy mix?
Why breed a yorkie-shitzu? 
Did you look at the “Health Guarantee” section of that website? It’s so bizarre it’s laughable. 
“If the buyer does not comply with the above responsibilities listed under “The Buyer’s Responsibility”, there will be a $2,500 fee for breach of contract.”
Yeah sure. Good luck with that. But…it probably scares away most people from making health complaints, especially dysplasia - since it sounds impossible to blame the breeder for anything less than the most horrific hips (like a puppy needing a complete FHO). Which would cost more than the price of the puppy anyway.
OR…they could screen the parents for common hereditary defects. It’s not a guarantee, but sure would reduce the chances of dysplasia and other common defects. Sigh.
2 Likes
I expected that the section titled “Scams” on that website, would tell people how to avoid puppy selling scams.
Instead it was the seller going to great lengths to explain why her breeding business was not a scam, because “scammers don’t have websites” among other reasons.
If I was buying a puppy, I would not be paying someone a deposit and then driving to a public parking lot, months later, to hand over the purchase price “in cash only”.
6 Likes
And that includes causing anyone to look askance at, or to “spread rumors” about her puppy breeding business. Being an unsatisfied customer will cost you $2,500.
2 Likes
