How Humans Ruined Dogs, and Why New Dog Breeds Are Still Being Created

How humans ruined dogs is not ancient history, and new dog breeds are still being created right now, with the same closed-book recipe. This video covers both halves: what breeding purely for looks did to real dogs, and how kennel clubs still mint new breeds today, three of them in a single day this year. It starts 14,000 years ago with a sick puppy nursed back to health at Oberkassel, near Bonn, and a 2025 skull study showing dogs were already varied 10,000 years before any kennel club existed. Then came the system: a poultry-show dog contest in Newcastle upon Tyne (1859), the Kennel Club (London, 1873), the American Kennel Club (Philadelphia, 1884), and Queen Victoria's own pugs, plus Looty, a looted Pekingese. The bill, in numbers: the pug's 53.9-times risk of breathing syndrome, 70% of Cavaliers with spinal-cord cavities by age six, bulldog litters over 8 in 10 delivered by caesarean, a dachshund's roughly 1-in-5 lifetime risk of disc disease, English bulldog DNA with almost no genetic "wiggle room" left, and a 584,734-dog UK study on what a flat face costs in years. It tests the idea that less-changed breeds are automatically healthier, using the Samoyed, and finds it only half true. Then the backlash: the 2008 documentary that made the BBC drop 42 years of Crufts, Crufts 2012 vets failing six champion dogs, Norway's Supreme Court ruling that breeding Cavaliers the usual way breaks the law, and a 2025 Dutch court ruling against the Dutch Kennel Club for pedigreeing dogs that fail the government's own snout-length rule. Then, the part nobody covers: the machine never stopped. The AKC's exact recipe for a new breed, three breeds it recognized on 1 January 2026, the Labradoodle's inventor calling his own creation "a Frankenstein's monster," the American Bully invented in a Virginia backyard around 1990, and the UK's 2023 ban on the XL Bully after a fatal attack. It closes with fixes already working: a Dalmatian saved by one outside dog, the Lundehund's outcross program, and the newest AKC breed turning out to be the longest-lived one ever measured. Places: Oberkassel, Newcastle upon Tyne, London, Philadelphia, Windsor, Sydney, Liverpool, Birmingham, the Yamal tundra, Oslo, Amsterdam, Raleigh, Melbourne, Virginia, Lofoten, Lancashire. SOURCES Janssens et al. 2018, Bonn-Oberkassel puppy Bergström et al. 2020, Francis Crick Institute, ancient dog lineages Ameen and Evin 2025, Science, 643 dog and wolf skulls Canine Chronicle, first dog show, Newcastle upon Tyne 1859 The Kennel Club, founding and first stud book (1873-74), and Channel 4's Crufts 2016 coverage American Kennel Club, founding, breed statistics, recognition rules and the 2026 breeds Royal Collection Trust, Victoria's pugs and Looty the Pekingese RVC VetCompass 2022, pug health Roberts, McGreevy and Valenzuela 2010, dog brain-shape study McMillan et al. 2024, UK life expectancy, 584,734 dogs Evans and Adams 2010, bulldog caesarean rates Pedersen, Pooch and Liu 2016, UC Davis, bulldog genetics Parker, Knowler and Rusbridge 2011, Cavalier syringomyelia and heart disease Packer et al. 2016, DachsLife 2015 dachshund survey W. E. Mason, Dogs of All Nations, 1915 BBC One, Pedigree Dogs Exposed, 2008 VetSurgeon / VioVet, Crufts 2012 vet checks Supreme Court of Norway, ruling HR-2023-1901-A, 2023 Amsterdam District Court, ruling ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2025:3831, 2025 Finnish Kennel Club, brachycephalic walk test FCI, Thuin, Belgium, world breed registry ABC News Australia 2019, Wally Conron interview American Bully Kennel Club and UK government, American Bully origin and the XL Bully ban Dalmatian Club of America Foundation, AKC and Retromops (Germany), Dalmatian and pug outcross projects PLoS ONE / AKC, Norwegian Lundehund history and outcross IMAGES All dog pictures in this video, including the black and white period images, were generated by us for this video. The period images are reconstructions of how each breed was described and photographed around nineteen fifteen, not archival photographs. Everything stated in the narration is sourced above.