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Bone mouth vs. Meat mouth Shar-Pei
"To be or not to be that is the question?
The very wrinkled Shar-Pei has been already too deeply imprinted in the social mind.
In animal psychology, we call this imprinting, a type of early social learning that will play a crucial role in subsequent interactions with other members of species. First reported in 1911 by Oskar Heinroth, and formalized by his student Konrad Lorenz this concept of imprinting.
The original imprinting experiment concerned rearing geese in isolation from the time they were hatched, the birds followed "the master" everywhere as if he were their parent and companion. When our society, first in the Western world and then even in the Eastern world initially exposed to "Shar-Pei" in the form of a self-fulfilling image of "wrinkles" and "big head", then the image was being set in the social mind and became difficult to change, not because of any reasoning but because of this imprinting process.
Looking at the history of Shar-Pei, of how it was being known to the Western world, we can take reference to a philosophical paper by Plato (427-347 B.C.) written in " The Allegory of the Cave". This Plato's work can be found in Book VII of Plato's best known work, The Republic, a lengthy dialogue on the nature of "justice". An understanding of this dialogue can help us see the position of the traditional Shar-Pei today.
It helps us understand how people perceive things in the beginning, of seeing the shadow of shar-pei in the cave in front of the fire. People believed in the shadow of Shar-Pei and thought it to be the true Shar-Pei. Then when one prisoner in the cave escaped, went out and saw something else under the sunlight, and when he came back into the cave to show what he saw of an original Shar-Pei under the sunlight, he had created commotion in the cave. Although the escaped prisoner thought he had brought back "the image of a real Shar-Pei" to the people in the cave, people still thought the shadow is truer than the real object which caste the shadow because familiarity supersede new perception. This new perception is actually something that only the escaped prison had the opportunity to go out of the cave and saw under the sunlight. This perception is only new to the escaped prison but the object was there already long time ago whether any prisoner escape from the cave or not.
Traditional bone mouth Shar-Pei is still a very small minority. It is indeed difficult for early Shar-Pei fancier to accept that what they had imagined to be was not exactly what it could have been.
Splitting the shar-pei into two types, the traditional type (bone mouth, working type etc.) and the companion type (meat mouth, non-sporting etc.) can be one option. Similar question find its way in the world of German Shepherd and Japanese Akita to name a few. In fact, as reported in the Dog Place Dog Press mentioned that UK Kennel Club will split the Akita breed effective January 1, 2006, separating Akita (equivalent to Great Japanese Dog) from the original Japanese Akita Inu from Japan.
In fact, on May 26, 1996, the first Shar-Pei specialty show organized by the Dali Shar-Pei Research Association has courageously shown the Shar-Pei into two types. The first Shar-Pei specialty show in China since 5000 years of history! This is the best respect we can give to both side of the fence. After so many years, we see more and more that getting out of the cave is a right decision and more and more people begins to think along this line.
Morphology clearly tells us clearly that bone mouth is different. See also relate article in the Dog Place on History of Shar-Pei in China.
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Introduction
To split or not to split?
