Petfinder dogs mislabeled many times?

Been reading here and wondered if others have found dog breeds MAJOR mislabeled on Petfinders.

Beardie cross? Does that look like a beardie at all to anyone?
Adopt a Bearded Collie: Scamp: Petfinder

Collie mix?
Adopt a Collie: Laddie: Petfinder

In list said Cairn Terrier, ion details see says mix but I dont see much Cairn?
Adopt a Cairn Terrier: Toby 3: Petfinder

BTW find all adorable just wish someone would pick closer breeds in some cases.
Other day saw a dog labeled chihuahua that looked pure GSD to me :rofl1:
Sigh back to addiction of browsing petfinders

I have see alot of dogs on petfinder that are mislabeled like the dogs you posted and it really bugs me.

Whew not just me.. sometimes think gee this dog would have a better chance of finding a home if it was correctly identified and labeled type wise... Not that I can identify all breeds in dogs by any mode... but sometimes the wrong label major sticks out...

Nope its not just you! Yeah I totally agree with you.

This kinda thing although not the same also really bugs me.
Adopt a American Bulldog: ROCKY: Petfinder
CLEARLY a Am Staff yet look what he is labled as.

Am wondering if thats in attempt to get the boy a forever home avoiding the staffie label?

The 'beardie" is shaved - it may very well look like one with its coat.

The collie mix looks like either a collie or sheltie mix to me; it's exactly how I would have described it.

Scruffy little terrier mix - may as well pick Cairn I guess.

I've seen some pretty off labels, but those aren't ones that bother me.

There was a similar thread recently, and I posted an explanation for some of it from a rescue's perspective. Sometimes it's just a bad guess or a mis-hit (I've seen some that clearly the person hit the breed above or below the target one by accident), but there is a lot of reasoning behind the breeds that are chosen.

I'm sure it is but I do not agree with it, they are 2 different breeds and I think he is probably a purebred Staffie.

sometimes they mislabel them on purpose to increase the views by more desirable types or to protect them from local ordinances.

I agree the collie mix most likely has collie in it. The others could go lots of ways, and not near as off as some others I've seen!

sorry - double post!

I know when I check out Goldens , some don't look like Goldens !

In that defense, they have the dog labeled as an AB mix. Considering the modern day AB has APBT back in it's genetic make-up, it's quite realistic to think that should an AB be mixed with another bully-type dog, that that dog could be the end product.

Identifying "pit bull" breeds is almost impossible to do when trying to do some from one another.

Shelters around here label pits all sorts of weird things. One time they labeled one a Chinese Shar-Pei mix. *rolls eyes*

I find it VERY unethical and STUPID, and when I was working at a shelter and in charge of petfinder, *I* always made sure the breeds were listed honestly and as close a guest to the breed as possible.

tessa
the shar pei at the turn of the century was as similar to the APBT as the staffy bull is. what aws there once can be brought back to the surface especially if it is mixed. and although rare once in a while they are what they are labelled because they are an owner turn in. i'm not saying the dog is or isn't just that unless you saw the deed done you never really know.

Sometimes it just stems from lack of knowledge about a specific breed. Jack's therapy lady runs a rescue. She had a foster dog that she kept calling a Doberman mix. However, she said he acted just like Jack (Jack's personality and mannerisms scream "lab"), and even looked like him--to the point that she would mix up there names. When I looked the dog up on Petfinder and saw his pics I'd have bet the farm that he was a mismarked chocolate with tan points. He looked like someone had just painted points on a lab, but he was labeled as a dobe mix because most people don't realize that coloring *can* occur in labs.

I've volunteered and worked for shelters in the area. Trust me, this do was fully pitty, and they just wouldn't say it. I even emailed them explaining that the dog they had listed for a shar-pei was a pit, an dI got a response saying "We know, we just want to see him get adopted." sort of thing. Very irresponsible.

And considering many shelters employ people that hardly know a thing about dogs,... the first 6 months I worked at the local shelter, I was constantly having to change breeds on paperwork and on petfinder before they finally stopped guessing altogether and gave that duty entirely to me. Since I've been gone, their breed guesses have gone back to the gutter. Lol.

Maybe some rescues put a lot of thought into breed guesses, but the shelter I worked at for a long time DID NOT. some of the staff was so incredibly uneducated about dogs. Many volunteers were very breed knowledgeable but we (no matter if we all agreed) could not write the cards or change the labels because only the staff could do that. If you told someone, they would just get annoyed.

The way it worked was there was a poster with drawings of dog breeds from about the 70s. The drawings were maybe an inch and a half long. The workers would compare the dog to that and write down the breed. One of the full time employees was sitting there talking to a lady who was looking at a middle aged cocker spaniel and telling her they were 'Very energetic because they were bred to herd sheep all day long' and encouraged her to go look at some terriers if she wanted a more laid back dog. I kid you not. I HAD to go in and correct him because it was just so wrong. He ended up very annoyed with me but I left a bit after that anyways. He also labeled an obvious doodle as an otterhound too.

The pit bulls were the most upsetting to me. We had a policy that we did not adopt out APBTs and Am Staffs. I saw so many dogs that were mislabeled both ways. Several were pits and pit mixes labeled as boxer mixes. The one that really got to me was a BLUE MERLE dog that was put down because it was a 'APBT'. I know a dog could be a pit mix and merle but this dog was a catahoula. But he was condemned no matter what because the staff labeled him a pit bull. He died simply because the workers didn't know that APBTs and Am Staffs don't come in merle and they wouldn't admit that they were wrong.

actually the apbt does come in merle. the old timers would cull them at birth or soon thereafter. the pit dogs were originally anything that was game, one pure retreiver had an exceptional record of over 80 consecutive wins. bulldogs & terriers were most common because both types were consistantly game. crossing the two was done to create a good midsize dog, but that wasn't the only cross that found it's way into the box. bullXgrey, bullXcur & bullXcollie were all used in attempts to produce a more exciting fighter than the pure bulldog. also german boardogs (which come in merle) were pitted against large bulldogs, winners would have been bred from. \ both the collies & the greys added merle to the gene pool. the effect was marginal due the the amazing synergy of the bull & terreir crosses. however merle stayed in the gene pool. whats more, by breeding a merle to a brindle you can get unexpressed merle that appears to be a solid colored dogs w/ marginally darker shading down the spine & across the shoulders. these unexpressed merles bred to solid colored & brindle dogs produce both expressed & unexpressed merles. also the unexpressed merles bred to each other can produce double merles w/little or no white and little or no health effects. i've seen merles that because of the pattern of the spotting ALMOST looked like brindle and to someone who didn't know better would probably be thought brindle. so merle can hide in the genes especially if another pattern is suppressing it's appearance.

Gah Pops. You're making me do it: I disagree on the merle issue.

I've spoken with several historical dogmen and every single one of them told me that such a dog (a merle) did not exist in the APBT. Of course they went on and on, but that was the general consensus.

the oldtimers almost universaly culled obvious merles. but as i stated you can have unexpressed merle & some dark merles can appear to be blue brindle due to the spotting pattern. and as long as the dogs won they might cull the merle individuals but not the whole line. it was there just hidden. also some merles looke like a straight spotted dog that is a black or red spotted dog w/ just a small smudge of blue or lighter red in an inconspicuous place. the dog might not look it, but it is still genetically merle. it's not like show line danes where they seperate brindle & black & spotted dogs. breeders didn't hesitate to breed a brindle to a spotted dog. so yeah it was always there, but because the regular merle links to other health issues (and therefore less winning) their presence in the genepool was minimized by judicious culling. less obvious merles & unexpressed merles that won continued to pass it on.
ETA a lot of old timers in many breeds never used the term merle, they were just a red, black or blue spotted dog. so unless a dog was describe in a way that specifically made it merle (for example almost no one ever said such & such dog was about 70% white w/ black spots and a blue spot on his left shoulder) you wouldn't know. most of the dogs color descriptions weren't that good. but if we got a pile of them & sat down i bet we could find a few that would be suspiciously like merle. heck unexpressed red merle looks an awful lot like red smut.