Will also post this stuff with Deleted Username.
Ok. Ever since my shinanegians with female lab wank there, I've been thinking. How do we interpret the statement from
this source? vvv
"The average dog can pull three to four times their body weight."
This statement above is in regards to the theme of pulling weight in it's surrounding text. Also,
this source says the same thing for healthy, fit dogs vvv
"Depending on the conditions, a healthy, fit dog can likely pull about 3 times their own body weight."
Beyond these statements, there aren't really too much context behind how this was given. Despite this, applying these statements in context to dogs that are very strong pound-by-pound like Huskies and Pitbulls would make sense, considering that many dogs were bred to be stronger pound-by-pound to their particular purposes unlike most other dogs.
So basically, the average healthy dog can pull 3-4 times their weight (which is notable in dogs very strong pound-by-pound), but how do we interpret "average?"
Due to the diversity of dog breeds, it would be inaccurate to apply an average dog weight. So Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is used, though it's methods of determining itself don't give an average weight.
At this point from my perspective, there are 2 interpretations that I know of to interpret the weight pulling statements. 1, we give the mean size+weight of all dog breeds currently or ever (a large amount of work I haven't seen by credible sources due to the complexity of dog breeds). 2, the mean weight of a dog breed. 3, how naturally strong they are compared to other dogs.
The first interpretation is pretty grand, though the complexity of dog breeds of
up to 360 of all of them in the world currently may get lengthy to add a mean weight. An arguement can be made that a mean weight and sized dog could be close to the most popular of dogs, dogs don't have to have a mean wieght to be popular though. Another assumption to this first interpretation is to use a
medium-sized-dogs's weight, but that wouldn't make sense
since a dog of comparable size in the large breed category would get overpowered by a dog of comparable size.
And females of the same bred can be fairly slimmer than their male counterparts.
The second interpretation seems to be more logically consistent to my knowledge since a different gender can be above average in strength in animals (most notably, males).
The third interpretation is also logically consistent, albeit with a vague line with average. Like the vagueness of the first interpretation, do we also intend to say the mean weight pulled by any dog in a pulling contest for example? However, we can most definitely determine for certain if a dog is naturally strong for it's weight pound-by-pound. Examples:
- Pitbulls are consistently natually robust pound-by-pound because they were originally bred for fighting
- Huskies are shown to be naturally strong and in some cases, can surprisingly fight evenly with pitbulls. They were bred to be sled dogs.
So if a dog is consistently stronger pound-by-pound, then the 3-4x multiplier can be applied. However, if a female or dogs in their low-end average size+weight aren't shown to also be consistently stronger pound-by-pound, then this multiplier can't be applied.
