Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Panther Dog


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. I would be willing to restore this as a redirect for the purpose of merging, if someone will volunteer to perform such a merge. Stifle (talk) 10:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Panther Dog

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I have tried to verify the existence of the "panther dog," but it is nowhere to be found in the book cited as the article's only source, nor does a Google search linking "panther dog" with "Aaron Hall" (its alleged breeder) turn up any confirmation. At the very least, there are problems with WP:V; at worst, it is a hoax. Pastor Theo (talk) 00:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 00:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. I agree, this is either an outright hoax, or it just fails notability quite convincingly.  Dawn Bard (talk) 00:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per Dawn Bard. -- Klein  zach  00:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. Niteshift36 (talk) 03:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

As a relatively new user to Wikipedia, I may not have mastered the markup language you have used to challenge this article, but I am prepared to defend its authenticity and notability. My quote is from the work cited, and is found on page 51. Should you wish to download the book, you can find a link at www.archive.org/details/extinctpennsylva00shoe. If you make the effort to read significant portions of the book, you ought to be struck by it's clear authenticity as a contemporaneous or near contemporaneous account of the decline and disappearance of a number of species from Pennsylvania about 120 years ago and the men responsible (with a number of photographs of the protagonists). Seen in a modern context, a great many comparisons could be made with similar situations in today's third world. However, my article is not about the wider context of this book, but a specific reference to dogs known as "panther dogs" because they were used to hunt panthers, the colloquial name for cougars. If you had, as I have, spent much of your free time over the last 40 years studying the domestic dog, you would jump with delight at any account of the way that existing breeds had been combined to produce a crossbred dog for a specific purpose. Such accounts are remarkably rare, as dog breeds are frequently developed over a period of time by a number of men who in many case are not literate. An example being the Rhodesian Ridgeback, clearly developed from guarding and hunting breeds crossed with some indigenous breed that sports the eponymous ridge, known otherwise only in a few Asian breeds. Another example is the Bullmastiff, which though indisputably developed significantly from the Mastiff and The Bulldog, can be shown to have an admixture of Bloodhound. If you examine the quotation I provided, you will see that the panther dog had substantially the same elements, with the addition of the Newfoundland. Why the addition of the Newfoundland, a dog primarily associated with water rescue, is by no means clear, but it is of scholarly interest. I could go on a long, long time, with particular reference to the Australian "pig dogs", used for a similar purpose against the introduced wild boar of Australia, and composed of a similar mix of dog varieties, but I think I have made my point that the panther dogs are of historical and sociological interest, apart from their intrinsic zoological interest. I suggest that you check this source again with more care, and in future apply even more care before you bandy about such words as "hoax". Collieuk (talk) 05:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)Collieuk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Collieuk (talk • contribs) 04:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment: A casual search on Google Books reveals this is not a hoax. Mr_pand [ talk | contributions ] 09:43, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The expression "panther dog" can be found in a few books relating to American Indian culture. But those dogs were not a specific breed known as "panther dog," which is what this article alludes to. Outside of a fleeting reference in the 1907 book by Shoemaker, I have been unable to find independent confirmation that a man named Aaron Hall created this breed. And, quite frankly, part of the Shoemaker citation seems like an exaggeration (the notion of an adult human riding on a dog's back stretches credibility -- the canine anatomy is not designed to accommodate human passengers). References to hunting breeds in other parts of the world are irrelevant to the debate. Pastor Theo (talk) 12:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge to hunting dog. The topic is significant enough to be included in another article but not notable to be the subject of its own article due to a lack of significant in-depth coverage in reliable sources.  Of course there were dogs bred and trained to hunt panthers, there are squirrel dogs and rabbit dogs and rat terriers, etc., people have bred and trained dogs to hunt any animal that has been hunted since dogs were domesticated. I am thankful for having had this opportunity to learn that panther meat looks like chicken but tastes like pork, having never knowingly eaten any kind of felid flesh myself. Drawn Some (talk) 14:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Per Dawn Bard. Mrs. Wolpoff (talk) 23:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Do Not Delete. The author of the source of this article, Henry W. Shoemaker, was a person of some distinction, making this a highly reliable source. It is the common practice on Wikipedia to write articles on individual breeds of dogs without sources, or with sources which would seem to be less reliable. As is emphasized in the current version of this article, this breed of dog has special significance as one of only two to have been bred specifically for hunting large feline species. The existence of this article may attract editors who have access to further sources with additional information. The point of contention about a dog of great size being able to bear an adult human on it's back can be resolved by an awareness of the size of the largest dogs (over 300 lbs). See photograph of the Guinness Book of Records' heaviest dog, the Mastiff Alcama Zorba of La Susa, with his owner Chris Eraclides, http://media.photobucket.com/image/zorba%20mastiff%20OR%20dog/Simba1906/zorba.jpg. See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6LDopZZVzg, a YouTube video of a pitbull of 56 pounds (less than a sixth of Zorba’s maximum weight) pulling 6613 lbs. It is, of course, morally wrong to ride on the back of a dog, which is not constructed for that purpose, but then neither is the back of a human, and one man may ride on the back of another. Collieuk (talk) 13:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)Collieuk


 * Further to Do Not Delete. Further to the question of dogs bearing weight upon their backs, I googled “dog carrying a load” and found two hits of interest:

One at jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/86/1/9.pdf, a research paper “ENERGETIC COST OF GENERATING MUSCULAR FORCE DURING RUNNING A COMPARISON OF LARGE AND SMALL ANIMALS”,  C. Richard Taylor, et al. J. exp. Biol. (1980), 86, 9-18 In this paper the energetic cost of carrying loads is studied in a number of animals, including dogs, which were trained to trot and to run on a treadmill carrying a load of up to 25.5 per cent of their body weight at three different speeds.

Another at www.americanjourneys.org/pdf/AJ-105.pdf is a document of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Digital Library and Archives entitled “Investigations of conditions in New Mexico, 1601”, in which a representative of the Viceroy of New Spain reports that a tribe of Native Americans hunt buffalo and, “they do not bear any burdens because they load their meat, fat, and tents on packs of dogs, each dog carrying a load of fifty pounds”. “The dogs are much smaller than mastiffs.”

These references are consistent with the credibility of a very large dog bearing a man on his back. Collieuk (talk) 12:49, 13 June 2009 (UTC)Collieuk
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.