Do I have a ‘square-headed’ dog?  Do I? While I was out with Luna and Penny today we stopped to say hello to a friendly neighbor.  After Luna had fulfilled her personal goal of rubbing her hair all over this man’s pants, he remarked that he used to have a square-headed dog just like Luna. No, he did not refer to Luna as a Golden, or a Retriever, or a Lab, but a square-headed dog.  This was an older gentleman, so I thought that maybe referring to a dog by the shape of its head, rather than its breed, was something that people used to do.  So of course (for fun) I decided to do a Google search on dog face shapes - and just like people - dogs have one of 6 face shapes: round, square, long (or "oblong"), heart, diamond or oval.  Here were the most common results I found for square headed dogs:

So when D got home from work today, I told him he couldn’t see the dogs until he told me what shape their heads were.  What?!?  Yep, that’s right.  No shapes, no puppies.   

“I don’t know,” he said, “they’re both wedges.”  BUZZ! Wrong! That’s not an option!   

“Well, are we talking about the shape from above, or head-on?” he asked.   

“I don’t know… head-on, I guess,” I told him. 

“You mean in order to see my dogs, I have to answer an opinion question ‘correctly,’ but you’re not able to even define the criteria? That’s not fair.”

“Hmm. You’re right. Let’s go see the dogs.”

So from there we went to examine our dogs’ craniums.  It’s kind of fun, actually, if you haven’t done it before.  You look them straight in the eyes, then pull back their ears so you get an unfettered look at the shapes of their skulls.  They’ll look at you like you are crazy, and they might be right (at least in our case, anyway).  Personally, I see Luna as an oval-shaped gal (see below), while D says oblong.   He’s also accused me of simply drawing an oval around her face in this pic and not really evaluating ‘nuance.’  That’s his way of admitting defeat, of course, as any wife knows.  He argued that while, yes, in this picture, her head does fit inside an oval overlay, in reality her head is arched at the top, and much broader across the temples than it is under her jaw. 

In order to ‘prove’ his position to me, he pulled up the AKC’s description of a Golden Retriever’s head:

"Broad in skull, slightly arched laterally and longitudinally without prominence of frontal bones (forehead) or occipital bones. Stop well defined but not abrupt. Foreface deep and wide, nearly as long as skull. Muzzle straight in profile, blending smooth and strongly into skull; when viewed in profile or from above, slightly deeper and wider at stop than at tip."

“See,” he said, “full of nuance.” 

“You mean nonsense,” I replied.  “Luna’s an oval.”   Needless to say, we didn’t get around to Penny… we may try again soon…

Image Credits - http://www.petinsrance.com/healthzone/pet-articles/pet-breeds/Boxer-Dogs.aspxhttp://www.pet360.com/Dog/breeds/all-about-german-shorthaired-pointers/2stUrHHhDkCGUA2nQixCwg?Dogs=German-Shorthaired-Pointerhttp://www.flixya.com/photo/1493149/Labrador-Retrieverhttp://puppies.barkerspetresort.com/french-bulldog/http://blog.sfgate.com/pets/2010/09/10/pet-myths-do-certain-dog-breeds-have-locking-jaws/