Word: breds
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Within the past century, though, and especially over the past 50 years, the most popular types have been bred almost exclusively to look good -- with "good" defined by breed-specific dog clubs and the American Kennel Club (AKC). "Form has been separated from function," says Brian Kilcommons, a dog trainer in Middletown, New York."Styles come in vogue. The competition at dog shows is geared almost exclusively to looks." This focus on beauty above all means that attractive but unhealthy animals have been encouraged to reproduce -- a sort of survival of the unfittest. The result is a national canine-health...
...beauty pageants rather than canine well- being? Legitimate breeders, who supply customers with beautiful but sometimes damaged puppies? Puppy mills, which do the same but at much higher volume and in search of greater profits? Or the public, more insistent with each passing year that a mutt -- a "randomly bred dog," to be politically correct -- simply...
...responsible may lie very close to the one that gives collies their long noses and closely set eyes -- traits that have been deliberately emphasized by breeders. Says Dr. Donald Patterson, chief of the medical genetics section at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine: "Many people have bred dogs for desired traits, but in the process of doing this they have also got undesirable ones. The objective should be to combine breeding for good traits with more careful planning to get rid of genetic defects. Unfortunately, not much attention has been paid to that...
Most of Jimmy's unpleasantness is directed into torturing his well-bred wife Alison (Silje Nnand). Alison's beauty, grace and propriety are frustratingly unattainable to her husband, and she exacerbates the situation by ignoring his rantings. Normand masters a frenetic nervous tension that shows itself in everything she does, from a palsied hand to a tremulous voice. She portrays Alison's silent suffering exquisitely. As she stands at an ironing board in the opening scene, we are captivated by her penetrating eyes and intense concentration on her work. In her frightened, innocent loveliness, Normand's Alison truly...
...little Chekhov; like ragtime, he should be played slowly. The elegance and pain in his work need to be discovered gradually, like the bruised beauty of a sunset. These actors do get the shouting scenes right; their abrupt, strangulated outbursts are appropriate to people who have been bred to optimism and implosion, not to the articulation of rage. And Van Dyck finds wit and poignancy in her several roles. She often has the taut stillness of a woman listening for catastrophe. But the rest of the cast often pushes too hard. Any overacting brutalizes Cheever's prose; mugging...